SCUBA diving from a liveaboard sailboat?

[ShaktisBoy]

My wife and I have just purchased our new to us Leopard 40, and have for sale our 1993 Hunter 30T "Tropical Depression" with the walk through transom. The previous posters have given great advice on not wanting a compressor and tanks plus all the associated gear. The hookah however has been perfect on TD. With the ability to store it on deck and with its low fuel consumption it really is the only viable diving option on a small boat thats away from civilization for long periods. We routinely took off to the central bahamas for 15 - 20 days and dove every day for an hour or two using about 5 gallons of gasoline in that time frame. We chose the octopump over the more expensive brownies and airline systems and have been quite happy with the robustness of the unit. A word of caution tho. Be prepared for alot of maintenance if you use the system often. I dont care which system you get if its in the salt enviroment it will be crusty in no time. I wire brush and paint ours once a year, tear down and check the pump. and go through a ton of WD 40 on all the linkages and springs in between major cleanups. Also we keep a spare pump rebuild kit onboard spare spark plugs and a good suply of quality hose clamps. Our unit uses a 12cfm pump mated to a Honda GC160 and has never failed us while diving but we do each carry a 6CF pony bottle just in case. Even now with the much larger catamaran and the option for a compressor and tanks the hookah is still our prefered system simply due to size and weight. As to the OPs question about washing gear after a dive, we went overboard on the 30 footer and bought a watermaker from cruise RO systems because .. well the admiral likes to rinse after her dive and who am I to argue with the admiral? Just in case any of you are interested our extreemly well equiped hunter 30 is available and listed on POP yachts for your viewing pleasure at

1993 Hunter 30T Sloop for Sale (24868) in Palm Beach County, FL - Specs and Photos - POP Yachts

Just be advised she "TD" is family and not just any Bozo with cash can have her, there may well be an application process.

[Dsanduril]

We carried a Bauer portable compressor (something like this one:BAUER COMPRESSORS - Compressors - Breathing Air - Portable Compressors - COMPACT LINE - JUNIOR II) with us starting in 1984. It was gas/petrol powered and took about 20 minutes to fill a 3000 psi 80 ft3 tank. About a year after we got it we got tired of hauling it up on deck and listening to the Briggs and Stratton engine, so we built a PTO on the 25HP diesel inboard and hooked the compressor to that. Ran an air intake to fresh outside air, and then piped the compressed air up to a deck locker that housed the filtration equipment, etc. That setup lasted us 20 years, when the compressor finally gave up the ghost.

In that time we probably filled somewhere between a thousand and two thousand tanks. In today's terms that installation would probably cost between $5K and $10K (so that works out to something like $5/fill without consumables, etc.), and is certainly not for the faint of heart. Compressing breathing air so that it is clean and useable requires attention to detail during the setup, and careful maintenance throughout the life of the system. I would do it again, because I like the capabilities of having tanks in remote locations, but we now spend far more time with just snorkels. These days we just carry a couple of tanks and fill them when we get the chance (I just can't justify the $ to rebuild the system for the amount of use it got near the end).

[Vagekennis]

Funny,

we are considering the same: a compressor can run on our solar panels it uses 9 Am;s or approx 2,200 watt and can fill up 2 tanks in 30 minutes, costwise approx 1800 usd.
and not as big as you might think 60x40x20 cm. I would not consider the hoses, way too dangerous if you ask me. If the machine stops all are out of air. We live in asia and go remote places. solar is free and enough. but circumstances might be different in other places.

Live aboard sv Vage Kennis Singapore
Walter

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Vagekennis

Funny,

we are considering the same: a compressor can run on our solar panels it uses 9 Am;s or approx 2,200 watt and can fill up 2 tanks in 30 minutes, costwise approx 1800 usd.
and not as big as you might think 60x40x20 cm. I would not consider the hoses, way too dangerous if you ask me. If the machine stops all are out of air. We live in asia and go remote places. solar is free and enough. but circumstances might be different in other places.

Live aboard sv Vage Kennis Singapore
Walter

2.2kW @ 9A means it is a 240V compressor.

Assuming your DC system is 12V, that's about 180A draw.

Your 30 minutes is going to pull 90Ah from your 12V batteries. How big is your battery bank and how many Watts of solar do you have on your Bavaria 46?

[downunder]

Originally Posted by Vagekennis

Funny,

we are considering the same: a compressor can run on our solar panels it uses 9 Am;s or approx 2,200 watt and can fill up 2 tanks in 30 minutes, costwise approx 1800 usd.
and not as big as you might think 60x40x20 cm. I would not consider the hoses, way too dangerous if you ask me. If the machine stops all are out of air. We live in asia and go remote places. solar is free and enough. but circumstances might be different in other places.

Live aboard sv Vage Kennis Singapore
Walter

This is a link to a chap in Cairns, Australia who is running a scuba compressor and water maker successfully of solar panels on a small outboard powered power cat.

Using 240 volt through invertor using variable freuency drives.

https://diy-yachts.com/forum/viewtop...=1117&start=10

[StuM]

Originally Posted by downunder

This is a link to a chap in Cairns, Australia who is running a scuba compressor and water maker successfully of solar panels on a small outboard powered power cat.

Using 240 volt through invertor using variable freuency drives.

https://diy-yachts.com/forum/viewtop...=1117&start=10

And driving a 2.2kW compressor. So he must have lots of solar and a big battery bank. Hence my question to Vagekennis.

He also needed to tweak his electrics so that his 3000Watt pure sine wave inverter could handle the inrush current.

[bletso]

An alternative is a rebreather. Small cylinders. 2 cf O2 per hour with the diluent about the same if you don't change depth a lot. We can dive many hours on the gas from a 100cf O2 and 100 cf of diluent canted/transfilled to our breather bottles. Rebreathers do require more training and attention. Mod 8

Better yet is that in my experience most of the better diving is relatively shallow, i.e. less than 70 few, try a hookah set up. Yes you are tethered to the boat or a float, but I can spend an hour on a small reef head.

[Andrew Grace]

Originally Posted by bletso

An alternative is a rebreather. Small cylinders. 2 cf O2 per hour with the diluent about the same if you don't change depth a lot. We can dive many hours on the gas from a 100cf O2 and 100 cf of diluent canted/transfilled to our breather bottles. Rebreathers do require more training and attention. Mod 8

Better yet is that in my experience most of the better diving is relatively shallow, i.e. less than 70 few, try a hookah set up. Yes you are tethered to the boat or a float, but I can spend an hour on a small reef head.

We also use Rebreathers on our boat but still run a Small Petrol Bower compressor, I would say the setup is far more cumbersome than just scuba however we only ever run the compressor for no more than 10 minutes at any one time and this is mainly for drive gas for the O2 booster , some video of a recent trip and dive setup below, one point I would make is that in Indonesia most of the best reef and diving is between 40 to 60 meters as the shallow reefs have been heavily fished out and corals destroyed by dynamite fishing .

https://youtu.be/_ueEiG4vr8I