The question of how to deal with underwater maintenance and/or underwater fun is an interesting one. If you go for the whole package it means a significant amount of space, weight, and costs have to be carried.

When we started cruising seriously in the 1970s, we felt we needed SCUBA gear to clean the bottom and prop, clear fouled anchors, and for fun and games. Compressors were too large and too complex for our 50-footer so we carried four SCUBA bottles. Of course we also had two sets of wetsuits, two regulators, back packs, etc. A lot of space! Throw in the weight belts and things really got heavy.

We did use this gear for cleaning the bottom, but then we could do that almost as well with a snorkeling gear. Diving in coral was cool (but not as cool as in the kelp forests of the Pacific Coast), but we could have almost as much fun with alot less hassle with just a snorkel.

Of course the real reason we felt we “had” to have this gear for was clearing fouled anchors. But we never used it for anchors, and only once used it for a fouled chain (swimming with hammerhead sharks I could not see in wonderful Pago, Pago in American Samoa). It would have been a lot less costly to leave the SCUBA gear home and replace the chain I would then have had to cut (or borrowed some one else’s SCUBA).

Which has led to our present approach. We do carry two types of wetsuits. A serious one for cold water maintenance and a lighter wetsuit for more normal work. We no longer carry SCUBA gear-we stopped doing that when we outfitted SUNDEER. But we do carry what is called a “hooka” rig. This is an oilless air compressor, which runs on 110V AC off our inverter, and which will provide air via a long hose down to about 50′. It is actually easier to use when doing bottom and prop maintenance as you don’t have the bulky tanks, weights, etc, to maneuver. And, in theory at least, it is usable for clearing a fouled anchor.

Which raises the question, what do we do if we cannot clear an anchor foul? Easy, borrow somebody else’s SCUBA gear!

While we have not carried compressors ourselves (feeling it was better to have an extra tank or two, and then fill them on shore or on other yachts), we have installed these on a a number of boats for clients. The simplest approach is an AC-powered unit, which runs with the genset. Or, if hydraulics are already available, run the compressor with a hyrdaulic motor.

Alternately, we’ve had friends who carried gas-powered compressors. These are noisy and obnoxious. The usual location for filling tanks is the dinghy, on the end of a long painter.