Buoyancy Control: Dry suit or BC?

[cecilb63]

I'm new to drysuit diving but I've got it where I'm a little heavy going in to cover the 6+ lbs of air I will use. So on entry I use the BC to offset that, not the drysuit. By the end of the dive the BC is empty. This makes sense to me and has been working well the last few dives. Also, less air in the drysuit seems to make swimming easier

 

[redseaalien]

Water in the low 50s and a 7/7/3 jacket/john/shorty with good seals "semidry" combo can come surprisingly close to toasty. Take ten degrees off that and I'm freezing in a neoprene drysuit wearing clothes under it that I'd wear snowboarding (under a jacket that's little more than a shell), minus the silk turtleneck, when the air temperature is below zero with the wind chill. Seems like some sort of sick joke, that. I thought you were supposed to be WARMER in a drysuit!

You are warmer in a drysuit. Did you wear a wetsuit under those conditions?

The wetsuits that combined to form a sort of semidry still seemed to me like it should be colder than a drysuit when the water's only 10 or 15 degrees colder where I was wearing the drysuit than it was with the wetsuit - thought you were supposed to be able to handle anything in a drysuit and stay warm.

 

[Dean810]

The wetsuits that combined to form a sort of semidry still seemed to me like it should be colder than a drysuit when the water's only 10 or 15 degrees colder where I was wearing the drysuit than it was with the wetsuit - thought you were supposed to be able to handle anything in a drysuit and stay warm.

Drysuits can certianly go where wetsuits cannot. It is what you wear under the drysuit that keeps your warm, not the suit. Thinsulate does a good job without adding a lot of bulk. I have dived dry with many people that dive wet, and they are often comfortable under water, but they freeze when they come out.