Arriving in Sasebo we parked in front of the dive op and decided to go to check things out before unloading the gear. J noticed from a distance that this place was a PADI shop and commented how much better that made him feel. When he saw the 5 stars as well he literally started beaming!
I had made arrangements to rent one of those drysuit things from them but as I'm quite a bit bigger than your average Japanese man we weren't quite sure how this was going to work out. Receiving the biggest one that they had I was pleased to discover that it actually fit very well - except for the boots which seemed to be about 3 sizes too large. J started wondering out loud if they would actually fit in my fins. We got the gear from the car and while I hastily checked if my fins would fit (they did...just) J was laying out his collection of long hoses, canisters, light-heads, pieces of metal and something I finally recognized - a wing like the one on my Transpac. While I and the Japanese there surreptitiously watched he attached stuff together ending up with something that looked a little like my Transpac but with lots more metal involved. Then he produced a pair of overalls and started to get into it. I asked him where his drysuit was......this is it, the reply. As what I was wearing was made of 5mm neoprene that was a bit baggy with some sort of valve thingy on the front and his didn't seem to have any neoprene at all I was a bit surprised. 'It's a shell' - he said smugly. I decided this must be a DIR Techie thing and presumed he knew what he was about as he had hundreds of 'drysuit' dives, and I had none. I noticed that he too had a valve thingy on the front of his overalls though. He handed me another hose and told me to put it on my first stage. This one attached to the valve thingy on my suit.
Now we had to decide how much weight I was going to need to sink this lot. Well - I normally dive a 5mm wetsuit with a 14 liter steel tank. Now we were going to be diving AL 80s. Neither of us had a clue what I needed. After some hurried consultation with the shop staff someone came up with a calculation of around 15 kilos but according to the shop 2 of those needed to be strapped around my ankles. Hmmmmm. I searched around for the longest weight belt I could find and started threading 2 kilo weights onto it. The strap became shorter and shorter the more I thread on but finally I had the 13 kilos on it and with a quick check to make sure it would actually go all around my beer gut we headed for the boat. On the way out to the dive site J filled me in on stuff like 'floaty feet', 'squeeze', and how to lift up my shoulder if I needed to 'dump'. I felt ready. The weather was great - a lot milder than the preceding week - no wind and nice and sunny. Arriving at the dive site the water was flat and glassy. It was beautiful. Suddenly the boat started pitching violently as two or three big swells passed underneath. I looked around for the other boat that must have caused it but there wasn't one. 'Tsunami', I said - everyone laughed nervously. Now we started gearing up. There were so many weights on my belt that I couldn't fasten it very tight so one of the DMs shifted them around a bit until it seemed to fit me tightly enough. Someone else helped me lengthen the ankle ones so I could actually fasten them. I couldn't get my SK7 compass strap to fasten properly - J helped me with that. 'You need DIR-F' he muttered. Feeling slightly inadequate and never having realized that DIR training would teach me how to fasten my compass by myself I decided I might check it out later. Finally we were all ready and I heard a sudden "Christmasee Tree!!!!" from J. He was gazing in wonderment at this guy who had a tool for every occasion (plus several spares) attached to around 15 D rings all over his body. I had to agree. With his red drysuit as well this guy really looked pretty. A dangly for every occasion!
Time to hit the water. Struggling to the side under the unaccustomed weight I was carrying I made my giant stride. J asked me if my weight was OK. I emptied my wing and started to sink. I went down a bit then rose back to the surface. 'How was it?' he asked. 'Not sure' I said, 'I think I'll probably be OK'. J looked dubious and suggested I might need a kilo or two more. Foolishly I declined so he gave me the signal and down we went. This was a shallow dive and I started bouncing off the bottom at around 8 meters. I fiddled with my various valves and established some kind of reasonable buoyancy but couldn't escape the awful feeling that my legs were too heavy. Going to a heads down position I managed to squirt a bit of air into my feet and that balanced things up so I could actually get horizontal. J looked quite impressed so off we went. We cruised slowly around bare rocks in a fairly bad visibility until I started to get a feeling that a)my feet were too heavy again, b)my tank or something was loose, and c) my weight belt was loose. I stopped and started working the problems. I managed to get my weight belt higher up my body to just under my chest but I couldn't tighten it any more. That did seem to fix a & c though. I reached back to check my tank and pushed it down a bit - it seemed to be riding a bit high. Once again horizontal and feeling reasonably under control I swam after J with one hand holding my weight belt against my chest so that it couldn't go anywhere. We cruised around noticing a few interesting things in an otherwise rather poor dive until I realized that I was beginning to drift shallower a little. I checked my air - 70 bar (did I mention the short fill of only 170 bar at the beginning?) - and tried to completely empty BCD & drysuit. Dive time was only around 30 mins but I was having to swim down harder and harder to maintain depth. I signaled J what was happening and pointed at the surface. He OK'd me so I spreadeagled and made a rather fast ascent. We had been quite shallow the whole time so I wasn't really concerned, as although a bit fast, it hadn't looked like anything runaway or polaris shaped. On the surface all hell broke loose. As I came into a vertical position for the first time since the beginning of the dive I felt my weight belt heading for my feet and made a frantic grab to stop it falling off. With my other hand I reached for my wing inflater to get buoyant but it wasn't where it was supposed to be. Searching around I finally found it tucked behind my neck. With air now in my wing but once again a peculiar feeling that something was amiss with my tank I located to boat about 150 meters away and started to kick toward it. The ankle weights really pulled at my feet making kicking unusually difficult and trying to drag my feet back down. J surfaced next to me a little while later and after I told him what I thought was wrong he swam behind me to check what was happening. At first he could'nt work out what was going on but eventually discovered that I'd forgotten to connect my crotch strap on the boat and my whole harness was trying to stay on the surface while my 15 kilos of weights were trying to pull me out the bottom of it. I was not happy. We made a quick plan. I stuck my reg back in my mouth and fully deflated the wing . This enabled J to fully get it back onto my body and finally connect the crotch strap. All the time I'm holding onto the weight belt as well with one hand wondering if I'm going to have to dump it eventually. With crotch strap attached and harness/tank back in place I re-inflated the wing and started to feel a bit better. I next reached down and removed the ankle weights and stuck them in my pocket. I felt MUCH better. Slowly we kicked back to the boat and exited. I decided that I probably wasn't going to fall in love with a drysuit any time soon - but did appreciate that at least it had appeared to work and I had stayed dry through the whole fiasco. That's more than we could say for J unfortunately. He'd had a wrist seal leak and flooded most of his suit! No....falling in love with this stuff would probably not happen in this lifetime.
If you wind up doing more drysuit stuff, I can highly recommend the DUI Weight and Trim II harness. It carries the load easily, puts it out of the way, and never slips down. Truly good stuff.
