Gear: Sports Equipment

Sports are one of the major activities on board and ashore, and some of them require a lot of gear. Here is a list of sports gear we plan to add to S/V Lynx. This list will be updated as we add more later.

Scuba Diving

With our Captain being a Master Scuba Diver Trainer, and his first mate a Divemaster, both with decades of diving experience, including owning and operating a Scuba Instruction School and dive store, you can bet we want to do lots of amazing scuba diving along the way. Therefore, we plan to have a lot of dive gear on board so that we can fill tanks, and have most of the gear there, so that visiting crew don't have to carry in so much heavy gear. All they will need is personal gear, a dive suit and a mask and snorkel, possibly fins and a dive computer, though we will have both of those items available. Below are some of the dive gear we plan to have on board.

Dive Tanks

Tanks are heavy, and not something easily transported on a plane. We will have four tanks on board S/V Lynx. All of them will be low pressure steel cylinders, though they will hold 95 cu. ft. (15L) of air, at 2640 lbs. (182 bar). Staying with low pressure means our compressor doesn't have to work as hard (see below for compressors).

Buoyance Compensation Devices (BCDs)

BCDs are adjustable, so if we carry 1 small, 2 mediums, 2 larges, and 1 extra large, that should cover any of our visiting crew who are certified divers and want to make a dive. As to which brand, that is still to be decided, though we will be looking for ones that are back inflation style, with built in weight systems.

Regulators

We are leaning toward Sherwood SR2 single hose regulators, as they are a decent price and have excellent reviews. Our captain has been diving one for several years without issue.

* NITROX compatible to 40%
* Pneumatically balanced design
* Sealed dry spring chamber design
* SMART demand lever and floating crown
* Single adjustment point

Diving Computers

We are a big fan of the Teric wrist mount dive computers. They have a wireless connection to read out tank pressure without an additional hose. They can be mounted on a camera rig instead of your wrist for a nice heads up display. These are top of the line computers, with every calculation and gadget possible. They are expensive $1,300 each) but worth the money. You can even look at your dive partners remaining air on your computer and they have a built in digital compass.

Air Fill Compressor

When it comes to a scuba dive compressor, we are looking for a reliable brand with these minimum specs:

* Output: 5 to 8 cfm
* Weight: Not to exceed 270 lbs
* Automatic condensation removal
* Auto shutdown at a specified pressure
* Two tanks filled in parallel
* Pumps to 3000 psi (200 bar)
* 3 phase electric motor

There are other things we'd like, but those are the main features. We looked at these contenders:

Compressor	CFM	Weight (lbs.)	PSI	Price
Bauer Oceanus -E3	4.9	115	5000	$6,700
L&W Compressors 225 E	7.9	203	3000	$5,114
Alkin W32 Mariner	8.8	364	5000	$6,360
Nardi Pacific E	5.6	238	5000	$10,139
Coltri Mch 8 EM Standard	4.7	236	3000	$5,995

The clear winner for us is the L&W. Second highest CFM, but 161 lbs. lighter than the Alkin. And the lowest price of all contenders. It only pumps to 3,000 psi, but we are using Low Pressure 2,640 psi tanks anyway, so that is all we need. Our second place is the Bauer Oceanus, but at 3 CFM slower filling, and a higher price, we like the L&W, which meets all of our listed requirements (above).