Anyone tried this?

[brownturtle]

Has anyone ever tried wearing polar fleece long underwear underneath a lycra skin as sort of a poor man's Polartec skin?

I'm heading to Cozumel next month and I'm trying to decide what to bring for a suit. I've been there before and I was perfectly comfortable in an a Polartec skin, but it was borrowed and I can't use it this time around because its owner will be using it on the same trip. I have fleece long underwear I use for skiing and I can get a skin pretty cheap, so I'm thinking this might be a good inexpensive solution. Anyone have any experience with this? What do you think? Dumb idea, or good compromise for divers on a tight budget?


brownturtle

 

[SubMariner]

In a nutshell, it won't work. Long underwear works in a DRYSUIT situation because it traps air & keeps you warm. Won't work if it's wet, will it?

I would advise either getting a full Polartec Skin or a full 3mm wetsuit. There are many of the latter out there at very reasonable prices.

And if you find that 3mm isn't enough, add an Aeroskin sleeveless vest.

JMHO,

 

[RICHinNC]

I would also wonder about the weight once whatever you are wearing gets wet. It might not be noticeable under water...but on exiting...that one pound set of undies is going to weigh a whole bunch more for sure

 

[Charlie99]

http://www.diversdirect.com/scripts...tem=28043&Template=9990000001000999&Group=167

I'd dig a little deeper and get a real wetsuit, even if I had to cut back on my beer and booze budget for the trip.

If you are doing lots of dives each day, particularly as you get more at ease in the water and move less, you will want lots of thermal protection. A 3/2 (3mm on torso, 2mm on lower arms and legs) is a nice wetsuit most tropical diving.

 

[brownturtle]

RICHinNC- Good point. I hadn't considered the weight-when-wet issue. I normally loose the skin between dives anyway, but still, that would be cumbersome getting out of the water. Maybe I should try it out in the shower first!

SubMariner-
Forgive my ignorance, but if Polartec doesn't insulate when wet, then why do they bother lining dive skins with it? I think I must be missing something.


Thanks for the opinions. I guess I'll search around for some deals on a wet suit. (Beer budget is already $0, I'm just not a drinker.) Thanks for the link, those look promising. It also occured to me that the sporting goods stores around here should be clearing out the watersports wet suits at a deep discount. Maybe I'll try that. I know they won't last as long, but by the next time I get to the Carribbean it probably won't fit me any more anyway.

 

[PurduEE]

brownturtle once bubbled...
SubMariner-
Forgive my ignorance, but if Polartec doesn't insulate when wet, then why do they bother lining dive skins with it? I think I must be missing something.

no, I don't think it's you...

I dive occassionally with a guy here in Lake Travis that does this a lot. He just wears a fleece pullover under his wetsuit (it's a tight shirt & westuit). He swears by it and claims to have picked it up from some divers he used to dive with in Canada. I have yet to try it, and I'm somewhat skeptical. However, from a pure 'would it work' perspective, I can't imagine why it wouldn't as long as the layers are tight and reduce the amount of water circulating to a minimum. The shirt/undies would definitely need to be something other than cotton, since cotton will not insulate when wet, but otherwise, should work.

 

[SubMariner]

SubMariner-
Forgive my ignorance, but if Polartec doesn't insulate when wet, then why do they bother lining dive skins with it? I think I must be missing something.

Polartec is a company that makes a wide variety of insulating materials. As I understand it, the stuff they use for diveskins is a little different than the regular Polartec. Case in point: I have a PADI Parka circa 1994 that has a Polartec lining. It is quite different from the dive vest I have that also has a Polartec fleece inside it.

I think in this case it's a matter of it being a patented product line that bears the name Polartec.

 

[Mikey99]

It works perfectly!!

Even a tight T-shirt would be ok, the important thing is to keep the water replacement under suit to a minimum, and some clothes under the suit "traps" the water.

Also remember youre a diver!, the important thing is what works best for you when you are in the water, not when you are in the boat after a dive.

Michael:mean:

 

[oxyhacker]

Actually, I think it would be a lot better than nothing - comparable to a polartech diveskin though less trim. Heck in the old days we used to soak sweatshirt in liquid latex for a cutrate wetsuit, and and others have pointed out, even a tee shirt is a lot better than nothing if it's snug.

Polartech works (if it works at all; there are some very knowledgeable people who swear it doesn't!) not by insulating as much as by keeping the water your body has already warmed near your skin, and keeping the cold ambient water a tiny bit away. It does this by having two layers, a spongy inner layer to hold the water, and a less permeable outer layer to slow the exhange of the heated water by your skin with the cold ambient water outside. You can't really call this insulating, because the water is still carrying heat from your body at the rate still water will, much faster than a proper insulator would, but the heat loss is still much less that if you were allowing a constant flow of fresh, unheated water across the skin. The catch is, this only works up to a point, and increasing the thickness of the soggy layer beyond that point quickly reaches the point of diminishing returns.

So if he was already wearing a polartech skin I'd say the additional layer wouldn't do much good, but since he isn't, an layer of just about anything inside the lycra skin would help.

Another alternative to a full wetsuit for lowcost/lightweight traveling protection is a short vest for core protection. This combines very nicely with fiber diveskins like polartech. I made a couple quick and dirty ones for a recent Carribean trip out of 1/8" neoprene, cost about $10 each and they worked great.