Cold Water Diving

[etype]

if your from montana jbichsel than i apologize for accusing you of bieng a ice-cream eating, franklin mint collecting yuppie scum. I remember \ driving through montana fast in a alfa romeo with a bunch of punkrock divers, and blowing out a valve arm retainer (overhead cam) in in a small town. Generally, if your anything like me, seeking any auto service in small town usa means getting financially raped and possibly tar and feathered if you have a problem with it. We were edgy dealing with the local garage mechanic...looking around to gauge his backup and when the **** was going to hit the fan (a result of bad expiences trans USA and auto trouble)we had no tools to do this on our own, and the car would be ripped off if we left it, so we thought.
But the mechanic seemed one of the most friendly, hospitable people and mechanics i’d ever met. Not only that, but the parts took a week to arrive.,,and a family he recommended took us in and rented us a backyard cabin, which in the end they took no money for, although we did what we could to show our appreciation. I have to say that this was one of the nicest townfull of people i have ever met in my life anywhere in the world. Hard to describe, but it was like storybook small town usa. Nobody leaned on us, they took us for who we were and they were just who they introduced themselves as. Everyone invited us in if they had the time. I was amazed...i was actually in that small american town yanks are always pointing to during election time and i believed was myth. When the parts arrived, the mechanic installed them but only charged us for parts...not that we couldn’t pay for labour...it was because showing strangers hospitality was montana style...serious...it was just good nature. Bizarre! As we drove out most everybody in the town knew of the dive freaks and waved and said ‘come on back anytime and look us up.’ I thought we were in the twilight zone.
I travel often...and where ever i go, people are slamming the USA and yankees...they hate them...they have a long list, some of it real, some imaginary...and they don’t take into account any of the good stuff. I’ll take the heat and put myself in the position of arguing with people with serious chips on their shoulders, sometimes dangerously, scenes that can go right over the top, and defend the US because of that town.
You might not think that’s a big deal, but really it is. These were some of the finest people i’d ever met. That town made more of a impression on me than the Grand Canyon or Mount Rushmore or any sight in the midwest. When i think of the US i think of that town. So i don’t want to be slammin anyone from Montana as yuppie scum. Didn’t know you were a Montanan. Apologies.

So the above is off topic, drawn out and i don’t care. I take your point about sticking to topic....but i’m not too strict about these things. Most of the stuff above is about as serious as it is on topic. And if it’s drawn out...im a fast typist so no biggie for me.

But it is my impression that people are overly afraid of cold because they are used to being baby cuddled by modern conveniances...they don’t realize that it’s just a short shock...and your body adjusts, and becomes stronger and more resistant as a result. Hey, this is a board of divers..? The normal human has far greater resilence and enviromental adaptability than people imagine...and the cold is presented as lurking death by the dive industry so people will buy drysuits instead of becoming ‘mentally’ tuned to their enviroment. Not that it can’t be too cold in certain circumstances..but not as often or in the way people are led to believe.

I’ve seen how you can take a man, a diver or a middle aged say... tell him the boat is sinking and throw him January waters around here...and he can likely have a heart attack and die immediately...or succumb 15 minutes later which is the estimated survival time around here in January.
And you can take the another man, not a diver, just another average man, bet him if we throw him in the water and he swims around for half and hour we will give $1000 to a charity for orphans...and if he has enough self possession that he’s not too worried if he can just see those orphans get playstations...you can throw him in the chuck and he will swim around, immediately get over the shock in 1 minute or two, have a good time, laugh like crazy...get out in 30 minutes (ten more than the estimated survival time) get warmed up and later not only not catch a cold, but not catch a cold for the rest of the year. He might even do it again just to see if he can.
I’ve seen both of the situations mentioned above. I’ve seen a 24 year old woman from a tropical country stip naked and jump in the ocean when she has never seen snow but on a distant mountain top...and it’s snowing, and there’s ice on the freshwater rivelets running along the beach...and she swims around for half an hour...get out and we walk a kilometer to a tavern for coffee like it’s nothing. She never died, got a cold...she had a good time...and we did it again a few days later on a different island. And my own experiences with cold water.

About 11 years ago i was on a urchin diving boat when we lost power in a rip tide and while we trying to get the engine running when we drifted up against a rock in the channel. There was a hyvac lifing arm secured to a platform for lifting bins to a cashboat that swung over because of the lean and the platform fell in the water, the tide caught it, and pulled the boat over upside down just like that. The flip started, we noticed, took one step and we were in the water in a second and the loaded boat was upside down and sank in the next minute and a half to the keel. There were 4 of us and it was only a few hundred meters to shore, we were all divers. Two of us said lets go, we can make it if we swim hard...two said we gotta stay, they will find us, we can’t make it with this tide...two of us made hard for the shore...we got out out of the water and started to run as best we can to get our blood going, we found some hippies living on the shore who had a truck...we warmed up in their cabin and they drove to the village and called it in. We were shivering like convulsions for half an hour and then we were fine. The coast gaurd has a hydrofoil out when urchin diving season is happening, they were there in 20 minutes once they got the call. The two guys hanging onto the keel line were gone and one wasn’t found for a week...one was never found. They died because they didn’t believe they could make it...a simple choice. I knew them for a few years and i know they could have made it just like we did...there was no time to argue and it was just a matter of giving it all you got...and it wasn’t all that hard considering the circumstances. When i was running it over in my mind later, i was struck by how it was a simple choice based on what you believe...thats all...how you look at the situation.

So i’ve learned that it is in your mind. Sure, the people here who say they dived wet and were cold...they were cold. But i’ll stick my neck out to say they were cold because they didn’t know they could make a decision and their body and mind will back them up .They can become stronger than their logic said they could with just a decision. You have a fight or flight instinct...if you choose to endure, most people will be amazed of what they are capable...your body will fight and most often win...if you just think of the cold, your body will think flight and if it can’t flee, give in.
So, if people say they just want to be comfortable diving...thats a choice i respect. But when they say you can’t dive in cold water, you’ll use more air and succumb to nn, have higher likelyhood of dcs...that’s all true if that’s what you believe. I don’t believe it, don’t see it, i think it’s a bad choice. Just my opinion and experience. For example diving in a well fitted wetsuit with polypropylene undies in 45F...i believe any healthy person can dive this, not bounce diving but a swimming dive, you can do this and your not going to be cold unless your waiting to be cold. You will be cold when you get out if you havn’t got that managed...hey find some heat or get a drysuit.
One last thing...in my neck of the woods i don’t see newbie divers sport diving in drysuits. And there are a lot of divers around here. I see all the hardcore divers diving wetsuits when they can...for the same reason i do...: to stay in touch with reality, to swim underwater with less lead, use less air, be streamlined, be in saltwater and be part of it.
,

this post is too long.............

PS. i’m going to be trying out this new superduper shell drysuit this weekend apparently as streamlined as a wetsuit...see if these claims are so.

 

[jbichsel]

Apology accepted and I'm glad you had a good Montana experience. That's how I was raised to treat people. Take care of your fellow man, don't take advantage of them.

That's how's I'll treat them when I have my own dive shop.

I'm 41 and it's funny to see how people in Colorado react to cold. When I go skiing, it's kind of like diving. I'll go no matter what the conditions (to a point). I have a friend here that I've known since we were kids. We ski together and will be the only ones on the lift when the wind is blowing and it's zero or below.

I'm getting him into diving (finally) and he will be my first student after I finish my IE.

I'm sure I will have a dry suit before long. I want to try ice diving this winter and if I like it, a dry suit will probably be a wise decision.

Take care.

 

[Delta_P]

Colton - I just checked your profile. You're fourteen, correct? How much growing are you likely to do?

A wet suit needs to be a close fit to work properly. Buy it loose now, and you'll have a couple of extra litres of cold water sloshing around you on each dive. Buy it snug, and you might have trouble drawing breathe in it next year. Can you afford another $200 if you do put on a growth spurt and grow out of it?

I started diving at seventeen. As a broke student, a friend with a little dive shop got me a good deal on a rack fit wetsuit and I made the hood and gloves myself. Melted a hole in the dorm room tiles when I knocked over the can of neoprene cement. The suit worked fine for two years, but I did occassionally freeze my butt off. Stop swimming to look at something, or go too deep and lose insulation as the neoprene compresses, and I got cold. But, I was young and motivated. I'll never know if the stupid things I did were the result of faulty thought processes at the edge of hypothermia, or just being young and stupid. I do remember climbing back up a scree slope after a dive and standing in the snow next to the car realising that I was so cold I'd lost motor control in my hands. I wasn't sure how I was going to get out of my gear and into the car when I couldn't even pick up the key. Interesting times.

Like any gear you have to understand the limitations and strengths of wet suits. With your stature and body mass you will lose heat faster than someone with a more <ahem> mature build such as myself. Stay shallow, keep moving to generate heat, and don't be afraid to thumb the dive because it's not fun anymore. You are diving for enjoyment after all, right?

If I remember the latest statistics correctly, if you are a new OW diver there is a 96% chance you won't be diving still this time next year. If that happens and you do lose interest in this sport, or move to a drysuit, wetsuits are great for white water kayaking, surfing, and other fun times.