"Cold" Water Diving

[Josh818]

What is the coldest water that you have been in and how do you dress for it?

What are some of your greatest "freeze up" stories?

Where in the Cold do you dive?

 

[beezwax]

Hey Josh, welcome to ScubaBoard!

 

[mtis2000]

1deg C ... and that was my first OW dive! Wraysbury UK
we had to go back there the day after.... it was snowing!
Otter skin and otter undergarment.... not good enough!!!!!!!!!

 

[D_B]

50f and a 7mm wetsuit ... yep, brrr ... I got cold at the end

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

45-46 in a 7mm FJ+jacket, hood and gloves. OK for 1 dive, need close to 50F for 2 good long dives (1 hour each). I swap to me 7mm full suit at 55, 3mm at 62, ditch the hood at 66F.

 

[Eau_Girl]

1deg C ... and that was my first OW dive! Wraysbury UK

And I bet they told you it wouldn't be that cold!! (your instructors -- >) Me too, OW at Wraysbury at about 4C in a drysuit.

Bought a second-hand OThree drysuit right after I started diving.

Coldest was 2C in Iceland in my trusty drysuit with a Fourth Element undersuit.

 

[Saltwater Junky]

I've only had 3 coldwater dives, the coldest being a quarry in Macon, GA 44f. My 7mm is more than adequate this temp. Fingers and toes get cold after 40min eveb with 7mm gloves and boots. As DiveProf's crew informed me, when I commented about my toes, "You have to deal with it." If I haddn't taken DiveProf's advice to wear neoprene socks I would have been crawling back to my car after our dive.

 

[fppf]

32 degrees F
I alomst passed out while they took this pic I was so hot.
Once in the water I was only warm, not boiling hot.

 

[Rick Inman]

I alomst passed out while they took this pic I was so hot.

Which is a problem we have, too. We dive water temps in the 30's all winter. And if you dress right for it underwater, you are sure to be hot on the surface.

I dive a thin UnderArmor under-layer under a Whites MK3. 12mm Otter Bay custom hood, dry gloves, Wheezle Extreme socks, hot coffee.

I don't have freeze-up problems anymore, now that I own the right gear, but I see it a lot with other divers. Especially since one of the LDS's went through a SP MK25 phase and sold a ton of those things to local divers. Not the right reg for these parts. But there is really nothing special about a reg freeze. Sometimes we turn off the tank and share air for a couple of minutes and hope the 1st stage will defrost and we can continue. Sometimes we just bag it. It's easy to breath from a free-flowing reg, and the anticipation from a diver who has never had it happen is usually worse than the reality of it. It almost always happens at the beginning of the dive, so there is plenty of gas to breath during a nice slow ascent.

 

[fppf]

Missed the apart about free flows.
My wife and I have delta 4's, so far no free flows.