BC/suit for Nor Cal diving

[MrSpock]

I've got couple questions about equipment suitable for Monterey/Sonoma:
1. What would be the better suite choice: 7mm farmer john + jacket, 8/7mm semi-dry with perhaps 3mm vest, or cheap/used dry suite?
2. I have a BC with just 30 lb lift. Would it be enough? I'm 6'2", 215 lb. With my 5mm wet suite I usually take 18-20 lb of lead.
Any suggestions/opinions much appreciated. Thanks!

 

[dannobee]

If you're diving frequently (every weekend, or multiple dives each day) you'll be happier in a dry suit.

Most of us who eventually went dry don't go back to wetsuit diving (at least in our waters).

Your 30 lbs of lift is plenty, especially if you step up to a drysuit, which can be used as a buoyancy compensator (although most of us just add enough air to get rid of the squeeze).


.

 

[Hinalo]

If you're going to dive wet you might also consider a 7mm jumpsuit with a 7mm hooded vest (usually comes as 7mm hood, 3-5mm vest). I prefer this to the 7mmm farmer john set up because the jumpsuit/hooded vest keeps me warm enough and lets me drop 8-10 lb compared to the farmer john. Dry is nice too.

Best would be to rent different configurations until you find what works for you.

 

[adelman]

I've got couple questions about equipment suitable for Monterey/Sonoma:

2. I have a BC with just 30 lb lift. Would it be enough? I'm 6'2", 215 lb. With my 5mm wet suite I usually take 18-20 lb of lead.
Any suggestions/opinions much appreciated. Thanks!

You can approach this scientifically...

You want your BC or wing's lift to be the larger of...

1) The buoyancy of your exposure protection plus the weight of the gas in your tank. *If you are properly weighted* you will be neutrally buoyant at the end of your dive with no air in the BC/wing and little air in your tank. You need enough lift from your BC/wing at the start of the dive so that you can be neutrally buoyant with the extra weight of the air in your full tank and a LOSS OF THE BUOYANCY of your exposure protection. For example, when you descend in a wetsuit, the neoprene compresses and loses buoyancy on every dive. In a drysuit, you lose buoyancy if it floods. You can measure the buoyancy of your exposure protection by wading into a pool or shallow ocean with it on and see how much weight you need in your hands to sink it with a half a lung of air (pool you need to correct for salt water; drysuit you need to open the vent and get as much air out as you can). Wetsuit you can also just throw it in the water tied to a weight belt until you find the belt that just sinks it.

2) Enough to float your rig on the surface without you attached. This is desirable in case you need to remove it at the surface and prefer for it to stay at the surface. This is not normally the limiting factor.

It is very unusual for a single-tank correctly-weighted diver to need more than 30-35# of lift. If you are correctly weighted at 18-20#, diving a steel tank which is around 3# negative when empty, and assuming your body is neutral, your wetsuit buoyancy is around 21-24# (figuring the inherent buoyancy of your BC and negative buoyancy of your regulator about cancel). Assuming you're diving 80cuft tanks, that's another 6# of air, so worst-case you need 30# of lift. BUT, you're a big guy, add a drysuit, a 100cuft tank, and suddenly the 30# wing starts to look a little on the small size. You'll get away with it as long as your suit doesn't flood. Before I decided to get more lift, I'd want to investigate whether or not you were a few pounds overweighted. Getting rid of that weight would reduce the lift required.

Ken

 

[MrSpock]

Thanks, Ken. It's a pretty thorough explanation of the buoyancy theory. There is also a rule 1/10th of your weight plus 5-10 lb. If all my calculations are correct 30 lb of lift should be marginally OK for 8/7 mm semi-dry. But I have never used 7 mil farmer John set up, nor dry suite. And I don't have any access to a swimming pool.

 

[Gombessa]

Just want to reiterate that 30lb of lift is more than sufficient for the vast majority of single tank divers in Monterey/Norcal. Of course, your morphology could be such that you're an outlier to the rule, but it's not as common as you'd think.

You've got a good baseline here to determine your rough weighting, but you'll never truly know the buoyancy of your suit until you get it into the water. A weight test in the ocean is probably in order.

 

[Thalassamania]

The ideal wet suit for the Monterey area is a 7mm GN 231-N Rubatex, skin two sides, custom suit, farmer johns, jacket with an attached hood, no zippers. But a dry suit will be more comfortable for more than two dives per day.

 

[Chuck Tribolet]

Good luck finding Rubatex. They went out of business a couple of years
ago.

The one thing you don't want in a Monterey wetsuit is a separate hood.
Either get a hooded vest or an attached hood. This keeps the cold water
from going down the back of your neck.

 

[micboucher]

The one thing you don't want in a Monterey wetsuit is a separate hood.
Either get a hooded vest or an attached hood. This keeps the cold water
from going down the back of your neck.

Yes, the addition of a hooded vest to my wetsuit was a huge improvement to my comfort underwater but it sure didn't help on the SI. That's when I got the coldest.

 

[Thalassamania]

Good luck finding Rubatex. They went out of business a couple of years
ago.

The one thing you don't want in a Monterey wetsuit is a separate hood.
Either get a hooded vest or an attached hood. This keeps the cold water
from going down the back of your neck.

That would come as a shock to the people who work there: Rubatex. They did come under new management back in 2004, that might be what you're thinking of.