Best I got out of 10.5 was 1.5 hours in shallow water, but then I was inflating the BC by mouth to conserve air and it was cray dive so it was a pretty slow paced swim.

maverick wrote:Best I got out of 10.5 was 1.5 hours in shallow water, but then I was inflating the BC by mouth to conserve air and it was cray dive so it was a pretty slow paced swim.

Thanks Pete. What is shallow and how many bars did you come up on? What would you prefer to have? The extra agility of the lighter tank or the extra air?

SurfanFish wrote:

maverick wrote:Best I got out of 10.5 was 1.5 hours in shallow water, but then I was inflating the BC by mouth to conserve air and it was cray dive so it was a pretty slow paced swim.

Thanks Pete. What is shallow and how many bars did you come up on? What would you prefer to have? The extra agility of the lighter tank or the extra air?

It all depends on your air consumption level, I tend to be pretty conservative on the air so the smaller tanks work ok for me. Most of my cray diving is in shallow water - less than 10 m and normally less than 7m (I dive where the boats can't go) so the bottom time is extended. If I do a scallop dive, normally I don't need to go deeper than 15 m and always plan on a 45 min bottom time and generally surface with about 70 bar. Depends on the current and whether I am drifting with the yak, or have it anchored and have to navigate around and swim against the current at some stage.

Can you hire different sized tanks and see which one suits you the most?

If I was boat diving and didn't have to carry the tank, I would go bigger.
Because I am yak diving, the smaller suits me. With a big tank you can always get a extra long occy hose so that you can take the tank off underwater and squeeze under ledges

Thanks. Some good info. I'm fairly good on air so was thinking of a 10.5L for local.

Mines a ten...as I am new to diving I hope that my bottom times will improve with experance but at the moment I get around 45min's from my tank and come up with about 50bar left, but all my dives have been shallow around 5 to 7 meters.

yakhangger wrote:Mines a ten...as I am new to diving I hope that my bottom times will improve with experance but at the moment I get around 45min's from my tank and come up with about 50bar left, but all my dives have been shallow around 5 to 7 meters.

Thanks mate. Starting to think a 10.5 will do me for shore and yak dives.

Got 55mins today and came up with 70bar still in the tank