The Comfort Factor

It is a rare diver who would use the word comfortable to describe the experience of using a weight belt. Let’s face it: Having 20 to 30 pounds or more of lead resting on your hip bones just doesn’t feel good.

But weight belts don’t just feel uncomfortable out of the water. They pretty much suck in the water as well.

Why is that? Consider a diver who is floating on the surface. There are two factors at work here:

• The BC pulling upward.
• The weight belt pulling downward.

Guess who is caught in the middle? This helps explain why the vast majority of divers these days buy only weight-integrated BCs.

With a weight-integrated BC, these two opposing forces cancel each other out. The diver wearing the BC is largely unaffected.