When might ditching a dry suit be necessary?

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SeaHorse81

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Headed to the pool this weekend to do some drills, and may flood the suit just to see what it takes to deal with that. That got me wondering whether there would be any benefit to ditching the kit and suit underwater. Has anyone ever had to do this for any reason, or thought you might have to? Can you imagine a realistic scenario in which getting out of the suit underwater might be necessary?
 
If you zipped up with a camel spider inside.
Otherwise, there's no benefit to going through the effort. Puts yourself at way more risk than necessary because you'd have to torque around, remove your airsource, replace it, doff kit, don kit, or even just jettisoning everything and go bombing to the surface (assuming you manage to get everything off in the first place). It just doesn't seem sane.

If you're drysuit floods you'll lose bouyancy. But if you drop weight, then potentially you'll just have a really draggy profile with your suit billowing about. Keep in mind though you'll have a BC to work with for bouyancy though.

The situation I would imagine would only be dire if you had a catastrophic suit flood AND a BC puncture, you still would NOT be better off trying to ditch the dry suit but in which case you then might be wishing for that camel spider situation instead.
 
If you zipped up with a camel spider inside.
Otherwise, there's no benefit to going through the effort. Puts yourself at way more risk than necessary because you'd have to torque around, remove your airsource, replace it, doff kit, don kit, or even just jettisoning everything and go bombing to the surface (assuming you manage to get everything off in the first place). It just doesn't seem sane.

If you're drysuit floods you'll lose bouyancy. But if you drop weight, then potentially you'll just have a really draggy profile with your suit billowing about. The situation I would imagine would only be dire if you had a catastrophic suit flood AND a BC puncture, you still would NOT be better off trying to ditch the dry suit but in which case you then might be wishing for that camel spider situation instead.
If suit floods all buoyancy is not necessarily lost. Tough climbing ladder with water filled legs though.
 
If suit floods all buoyancy is not necessarily lost. Tough climbing ladder with water filled legs though.

I'd assume that a flooded suit is not the end of the world, other than being wet and cold. No reason one should not be able to unhappily swim it up. I always figured the exit would be really tough though, and you'd probably have to get out of the suit at that point just to get out of the water.

If it turns out that nobody has ever had to get out of a dry suit underwater and nobody can imagine why that would ever be necessary, it seems like a good drill to skip other than perhaps for the sheer logistical challenge (air source out, mask off, both hands needed to get out of the neck seal, etc.). Task loading to the extreme. :D

g1138: Loved the camel spider comment. :rofl3:
 
Headed to the pool this weekend to do some drills, and may flood the suit just to see what it takes to deal with that. That got me wondering whether there would be any benefit to ditching the kit and suit underwater. Has anyone ever had to do this for any reason, or thought you might have to? Can you imagine a realistic scenario in which getting out of the suit underwater might be necessary?
never unless your a hard hat diver ............
 
Headed to the pool this weekend to do some drills, and may flood the suit just to see what it takes to deal with that. That got me wondering whether there would be any benefit to ditching the kit and suit underwater. Has anyone ever had to do this for any reason, or thought you might have to? Can you imagine a realistic scenario in which getting out of the suit underwater might be necessary?
I have more of a problem imagining how I'm going to be able to doff my DS underwater. Let's see, based on how I take off my DS on dry land, I can imagine the following procedure:

Uncouple suit hose - no prob. Doff BCD - no prob. Open weight belt, drop weights - Oooops, surface, here I come! Even in the buff, I'm noticeably buoyant without weights, at least down to ~5m (I haven't skin dived deeper than that while wearing just my swim trunks for decades). Doff suit - Problem. Let's take this stepwise: Take off mask, OK. Open warmneck, kinda tricky wearing thick gloves. OK, take off gloves, now my hands are freakin' FREEZING, and I'm rapidly losing all control of my fingers. Take off hood, well, sorta OK if I can manage to get my fingers working. Remove light, backup computer and compass from hands and forearms, where am I gonna put the stuff? Oh well, the light cost only about half a thou €€€. Open suit zipper, BIG problem. I've got a backzip. Besides, I can't feel my fingers anymore. Pull head through neck seal, I'm gonna freakin' DROWN before I've got my head through. Three times. Now, there's only the wriggling and dancing left to get the suit off the rest of me. Oh well, it doesn't matter, I've taken the express to the surface ten minutes ago...

If you've got a better procedure for doffing a DS underwater, I'd be interested in hearing it :wink:
 
If you've got a better procedure for doffing a DS underwater, I'd be interested in hearing it :wink:

trauma scissors, z-knife, etc. :D

In all seriousness, if it became life or death to get up a ladder or what ever else exit due to a flooded suit, yes, there would be a slice in each leg to get the water out as i got above the surface. Repair/replace vs. drowned is a better option.
 
If you've got a better procedure for doffing a DS underwater, I'd be interested in hearing it :wink:



trilobite.jpg
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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