What are things that I should bring for a warm water recreational diver like me?
We are warm water divers, 21C is cold. Our international flights allowed for 2x23Kg bags each, so we could take a full 23Kgs of dive gear.
Really the water varies in temperature significantly by dive site and current. We could go from 23C to 17C in one dive, you could see the cold water coming! And at Vicente Roca we were down to 14C. On many of the Wolf/Darwin dives you sit and watch the action, minimal exertion - good air consumption and cold.
We did both a naturalist cruise (week 1) and dive cruise (week 2). I took a 'light' 3/4/5mm wetsuit and a larva core vest for wet diving and a dry suit for cold water! We expected to use the wetsuits for the naturalist cruise snorkelling. As it was we dived wet for the first 4 dives at wolf and the 4 dives at Darwin. The 17C thermoclines were a bit cold... On our second day at Wolf it was colder and after the day's first dive we changed to dry and were comfortable. Both dive guides also opted for dry suits. Some guests opted not to dive. At Vicente Roca the water was 14-15C so the dry suit was good to have, many on the boat skipped the second dive, some aborted the first. We also had 3mm hoods.
Most on the boat most divers were diving 7mm wetsuits, I don't think anyone was warm! When my partner and I didn't use our larva cores they were gratefully accepted by other divers.
There tends to be a lot of holding and pulling on rocks and these are rough and have barnacles on them. Many people did not have gloves. We used cressi 2mm spider gloves that were effective, I wore one finger through. We also had Fourth Element 3mm gloves these are very solid and warm and used mainly when diving in the cold water.
The water is quite salty, so in my dry suit I was using 31pound of weight as opposed to 24pound at home. Even those in 7mm suits had heavy weight belts. If you dive integrated weights you may need to consider this. The weighs on our boat were in 1 and 2 kilogram 'blocks'.
