Drysuit disaster from La Jolla to DC...!

[Diverantz]

Yeah, they did slap ankle weights on me for the first time this pool go-around and I think it was better than without-

 

[lexvil]

First I disagree on the suit for buoyancy, you need to remove a bunch of lead so you don’t have to put so much air in the suit, you may want to take legal action against whomever certified you for drysuit. You are overweighted.

I use the suit for buoyancy except on the surface.

 

[Diverantz]

Yeah, no hard feelings I guess, unless I die, and then I'll have to figure out how to haunt them...I'm doing the whole certification over since the refresher went so badly. Will try to be careful and follow the training and tips from this board, save my own life. We'll see what happens!

 

[Zef]

I too disagree on the suit for buoyancy issue. When decending with an empty BC/Wing, one will need to add air to the drysuit to prevent squeeze and provide warmth within the first 10meters (and again as the dive progresses deeper)...this air serves double duty as it also provides buoyancy. There should be no reason to add air to one's BC/wing when one is already adding air to prevent squeeze and create warmth. The BC/wing should be used for buoyancy if/when there is enough air to prevent squeeze and allow for thermal comfort but the diver requires more air to maintain neutral buoyancy....in this case, typically minimal air will be required to be added to the BC/wing...if a lot of air is still needed to become/maintain neutrally buoyant then the diver is overweighted and/or the diver is losing air from their suit (usually due to poor trim/body position and control of spacial orientation).

If the OP is getting too much air in their suit that it is causing them to lose control and additionally lose fins (and boots?) then a combination or all the following is most likely true:

1. The OP is adding too much air to their suit...this is most likely due to the OP being overweighted. Do a proper weight check in calm waters to ensure enough ballast, but not excessive ballast is being used.

2. The OP has the wrong size suit and should change to the proper size...if off the rack suits are too long in the appendages then a made-to-measure suit is required. Sell the current suit and get a custom suit, they are not much more expensive than off the rack models, and will help if not cure the issue the OP experiencing.

3. The OP is not comfortable in the water with the drysuit. Drysuit diving requires one to re-learn how to control the spatial orientation of one's body in the water column. This takes time. Just because one is drysuit "certified" does not mean they are really ready to tackle the challenges of diving in openwater. Scale things back and work on skills in a swimming pool that is deep enough where you can add some air to the suit. Perfect your buoyancy skills and work on task management such as checking air, signaling, mask clearing, mask removal/replacement, body position, regulator recovery, etc, etc, etc.

Continuing to rush forward to dive your drysuit in openwater without a firm grasp on the basics is putting you in danger. If you lose control and "catch air" at depth and shoot to the surface you may cause yourself serious if not permanent injury.

Go back to confined water and work on the basics, you will know when you are comfortable and ready to move back to open water.

Or continue the present course and give us something to read about in the accidents and incidents forum.

-Z

 

[NauticalNick]

I'm starting to think that's the problem too, but I don't want to sink all that money into a drysuit before I know if I can even use one, or want to....maybe this is one of those cases where you just have to take the plunge and make that $1-2k investment / mistake? I've been renting everything; I told myself I can have nice things after I hit 100 dives-

Totally up to you as it's your money but I would maybe keep at it with rentals and ideally just find a rental suit that fits you better. Like you mentioned, the financial commitment for a good drysuit is quite a bit and you don't want to be stuck with something, perhaps custom-fitted, that you hate using.

EDIT: I would also state that given you don't have a firm grasp on using the drysuit yet, you probably don't even know what you should be buying yet, either. Drysuits come in all kinds of configurations and I think with a bit more practice you would have a better idea of what you're looking for, and what works best for you as it sounds like nothing is working best thus far.

 

[Boarderguy]

Made to measure drysuit will help you immensely. Lots of feedback on this site about Seaskin and 99% is positive. A drysuit is worth the cost because you'll be more apt to dive if you're comfortable before, during, and after the dive. Beyond that just focus on keeping the squeeze off and dumping your suit as you ascend. A flooded mask, while annoying, is no reason to balloon to the surface.

www.Seaskin.co.uk.

 

[MaxAir]

Hey internet dive buddies, looking for expert advice!

I'm just a baby diver and have been since my drysuit misadventures started, though by now I'm nearly up to 100 dives and wearing out my newbie excuses. Here's my sad drysuit story.

I got drysuit certified in La Jolla in Feb 2022. It went okay until my rented mask swamped, and while I was trying to clear it I caught air and did an unplanned ascent...shallow, but still-

So I tried again, in Lake Allure, May 2023. This time, ruin in the first five minutes: I'd overweighted myself, lost a fin, and sank to the (luckily shallow) bottom. I did the first dive, wound up being dangerously cold (didn't wear the undergarments, thought they'd be too "bulky"), couldn't even do the second dive.

OK. Third try. Present day. Last week I'm in the pool, tucking and rolling, when I catch too much air in my feet, unplanned ascent, can't right myself, lose a fin. Classic me in a drysuit.

Am I taking this act to the quarry this weekend? You betcha. Need all your tips and tricks for survival.

Maybe I can partially blame the ill-fitting rental gear for these mishaps, but am I really going all in and buying a drysuit at this point?

Also, if somebody in the Washington DC area wants to train a floundering would-be drysuiter, as, like, your do-good springtime project I'm here for it-

It sounds like these experiences are mostly in fairly shallow water. Each time you practice rolls and/or feet up scenarios occur, you'll need to realize that the majority, if not all of your air bubble will probably be raised closer to the surface during that exercise. By this simple change of air bubble depth, it will make you more buoyant and begin to rise - as with your out of control assents. Practicing in shallows may be somewhat safer than below an atmosphere (ie -30ft or deeper), but the shallow depth will exaggerate air bubble issues... even if you have not changed how much air you put into your suit or BC. Be careful if you suddenly shove your drysuit feet 5ft vertically above your current depth.

Also, drysuit diving requires attention to your trim (being horizontally level) most all the time, otherwise if your upper is lower the air bubble goes to your feet and your upper body will sink like a stone - leaving you to recover position over and over. Once you have added any air to your suit, that issue will occur regardless of whether using the suit for buoyancy or the BC, but will be a lot worse if using just the suit with much more air in it and nothing in the BC. Using the BC for majority of buoyancy provides a lot more control over where the air bubble is and helps negate out of trim effects.

Your best option to learn correct drysuit skills is to find a good instructor that will teach all aspects... not here in a forum.

 

[Outbound]

A few things come to mind.

Do NOT ever! Use only drysuit for buoyancy. Especially when newbie. Yes it is simpler to deal with one source of expanding gas, but:
If you ascend in an emergency, or inadvertantly, or in any kind of way were you are not in control, you will end up vertical on the surface, your suit will burp gas, your wing will be empty. IE, ABSOLUTELY no buoancy. If your ascent happened as a result of an out of air situation, or a catastrophic loss of gas, then you will not be able to fill your bcd or your suit. You will be negative, and you might sink and die. (If you ascend after using your bcd for buoyancy, the air will expand in your bcd and you will be positively buoyant on the surface)

I don't really understand those who say that using a drysuit for primary buoyancy compensation is dangerous. If it was good enough for Dick Long, who, if I have my diving history correct, wrote the first training standards for drysuits, then it's good enough for me. The issue is to be properly weighted. But this is ALWAYS the issue for all types of diving, no matter what the exposure protection.

I also don't understand your scenario. Let's say you only use your BCD for buoyancy and just have a bit of air in your suit to control for squeeze. If you ascend vertically in a drysuit you will burp that air on the way up. Meanwhile, you will be venting air from your BCD as you ascend. If your ascent happened because of an out of air situation or loss of gas, then guess what? You will be in the same exact situation either way. You will need to fin as you orally inflate. And if you can't manage that, then you ditch weight and become positive, just like our training taught us. So your example makes no sense.

Unless you are talking about a runaway ascent. In that case, in a drysuit, you will almost certainly be upside down. In which case you now have to quickly vent gas from your kidney dump while also trying to get yourself head-first. To me, it seems a helluva lot easier to just get yourself head-up and not have to worry about your BCD.

The bottom line is that you can use your BCD or you can use your drysuit for buoyancy. I don't care either way. But using your drysuit alone is not inherently dangerous.

OP, people have made lots of suggestions here. My primary suggestion is that you don't dive dry in open water and instead get a lot more pool time with a qualified instructor. I'm not trying to be harsh, but you should have known that you need to use undergarments with a drysuit. That's taught during the course. There's no way you should be doing inverted ascents and not be able to recover quickly. That's also taught during the course and is done in the pool until you can successfully do it. Blowing a fin off definitely makes that harder, so fin keepers or gaiters can help. Using a drysuit that is too large for you will make controlling the bubble and recovering from an inverted ascent more difficult, but far from impossible. I did my drysuit certification with a total of 7 dives under my belt in a rented trilam drysuit that was at least two sizes too big and I could still recover from an inverted ascent with no issues.

 

[Diverantz]

Made to measure drysuit will help you immensely. Lots of feedback on this site about Seaskin and 99% is positive. A drysuit is worth the cost because you'll be more apt to dive if you're comfortable before, during, and after the dive. Beyond that just focus on keeping the squeeze off and dumping your suit as you ascend. A flooded mask, while annoying, is no reason to balloon to the surface.

www.Seaskin.co.uk.

Yeah, I went through all the drysuit chitchat I could find on here and I think I'm just going to order a SeaSkin. It would be better to make it through training on rentals, but I can only find one drysuit rental option in this area. And after all, if I didn't want to spend a pile of money on something I may not even use more than once, I wouldn't have become a diver-

 

[-JD-]

Yeah, I went through all the drysuit chitchat I could find on here and I think I'm just going to order a SeaSkin. It would be better to make it through training on rentals, but I can only find one drysuit rental option in this area. And after all, if I didn't want to spend a pile of money on something I may not even use more than once, I wouldn't have become a diver-

What type of suit have you been renting?
TriLaminate, Crushed Neoprene, "Fusion" ...?
Socks or attached boots?

Diving with insufficient undergarments and compensating with extra air in attempt to maintain warmth is going to be problematic. Without the airtrappimg "cells" of the undergarment, you will not get efficient insulation and the bulk of that air volume will be able to redily move around and find the highest point.

I am newish to drysuit and am still working out my particular "style", but find that running my Fusion suit with the exhaust at or close to completely open and adding the bare-minimum of air to stop squeeze and allow for reasonable warmth works best for me. Obviously, I'm in the BC, for buoyancy control camp - it is ingrained in me since that is how I dive all the time, DS or not. I also find it easier to dump air quickly from the kidney-dump on my wing - especially if I get feet-up, which renders the shoulder dump on the DS mostly ineffective since the air is higher in the suit.