I think WetSuits are Safer and Better than Dry suits for the vast majority of divers

[coldwaterlloyd]

You do know that I made this thread ONLY ABOUT Tropical and Semi Tropical diving...at a Recreational level....

Cold water divers should consider this a discussion completely outside of their realm, with little application. Tech and Cave divers would see zero application.

Agree with you totally . I have seen trainwrecks with people thinking they can just throw it on and business as usual .
You pretty much are learning from square 1 your first few drysuit dives .
It is the title that will scare folks . I do not think vast majority should be concerned .

 

[tracydr]

If you think that....then watch the last video I posted....and try a glide like these guys ( the scuba diver w/wing fin and freediver w/wing) and then try this with a dry suit and jet fins...This is NOT a high speed thing...it is a big kick and very long glide thing...it goes to efficiency--and the differences are enormous.... ..Just try it, and then you will be on here helping me

Here is the video I refer to:
[video]http://content.bitsontherun.com/previews/Snp3jfQ3-C3PNGnB0[/video]

If you try what you see in the video, the big kick and long glide without work.....and you are trying this with a Drysuit..it won't work....You will feel like you have brakes on.....Then you will go back to this video, and see the scuba diver with kind of slick wetsuit( there are much slicker ones) , gliding like crazy....so much so, it should be apparent he can even glide UPCURRENT....and this should get some pondering going

Real practical in Southern California surf. How do you walk through the surf with your feet tied together like that? Holy Cow, those fins cost as much as $1,500!!!

 

[danvolker]

Real practical in Southern California surf. How do you walk through the surf with your feet tied together like that? Holy Cow, those fins cost as much as $1,500!!!

I'd mostly plan on freediving off a boat with them....Though we walked off the beach at the BHB Marine park with them, and put them on in chest deep water.....admittedly, there is no surf to speak of here....but I have done plenty of surfa entries in 6 foot surf or bigger when I was younger and stupider .....the way I would try this in Southern California, provided the bottom is not covered with tons of rocks that you would not want to impact with....would be to walk out a little deeper than knee to thigh deep, have back facing waves, and then slip on the bike shoes.....then fall backwards after a wave with a longer period following, and swim fast in backstroke posture untill deep enough to twist and be face down...as soon as this is accomplished, running under the rest of the waves would be easy enough.....the real issue is how your shore break comes in, and at what depth you can still stand up and put the shoes on....and be able to swim from there....

I don't know how different your 6 foot to 8 foot seas are to ours, in the surf zone....I expect you have larger periods between the waves...which is a little easier for entering....but I know nothing about how smooth the bottom is at the beach sites you would enter from????

p.s.
The $1500 one is for competitions to swim down to new record depths...well over 250 feet deep....the $700ish Dol-Fin versions in the video, are more for freedivers on reefs or scubadivers....

 

[Tigerman]

You could always fin up in the water I guess?

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

 

[rivers]

I am a purely recreational diver. If I need anything more than my 2mm shorty, I'm in my drysuit. Here's a photo of me in my drysuit

 

[Stratosphere272]

For the folks that only use a dry suit occasionally I suggest considering a neoprene dry suit (conventional neoprene like a wet suit, not compressed). Since the suit itself provides insulation, not as much needs to be worn underneath. Having owned several different types of dry suits, I found the neoprene suit very easy to control and more streamlined, almost like a wet suit where you stay dry. These suits usually cost less too. I haven't been on for a while and don't care to read 180+ posts, so forgive me if somebody's already mentioned this.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

I'd mostly plan on freediving off a boat with them....Though we walked off the beach at the BHB Marine park with them, and put them on in chest deep water.....admittedly, there is no surf to speak of here....but I have done plenty of surfa entries in 6 foot surf or bigger when I was younger and stupider .....the way I would try this in Southern California, provided the bottom is not covered with tons of rocks that you would not want to impact with....would be to walk out a little deeper than knee to thigh deep, have back facing waves, and then slip on the bike shoes.....then fall backwards after a wave with a longer period following, and swim fast in backstroke posture untill deep enough to twist and be face down...as soon as this is accomplished, running under the rest of the waves would be easy enough.....the real issue is how your shore break comes in, and at what depth you can still stand up and put the shoes on....and be able to swim from there....

I don't know how different your 6 foot to 8 foot seas are to ours, in the surf zone....I expect you have larger periods between the waves...which is a little easier for entering....but I know nothing about how smooth the bottom is at the beach sites you would enter from????

p.s.
The $1500 one is for competitions to swim down to new record depths...well over 250 feet deep....the $700ish Dol-Fin versions in the video, are more for freedivers on reefs or scubadivers....

The shore entries I have done in Calif that would not be practical/possible. Like anywhere else in the diving world you really need local knowledge and you need to follow it for safe entry/exit/diving. I am certainly no expert but what you describe would have resulted in a facefull of sand and lost gear on any of the shore dives I did there. :doh: my first surf entry in Calif I did wind up with so much sand packed everywhere it was unbelievable I had to flush water through the zippers on my boots for ages to get the sand out enough to get the zippers undone. The locals told me the my last surf entry/exit was almost elegant :doh: Yeah sure following their advice exactly and sheer blind luck! My first and only drysuit try dive was done safely for the same reason.

I note a very short adjustment period between diving my summer and winter gear. What makes a person safe or unsafe as a diver is not the gear but attitude, sensibility, training and practice. Some people "get it" faster/easier than others!

IMHO it is all about being humble enough to admit your experience level and dive within reasonable range of that. Number of dives and training mean nothing if you aren't smart enough to know when you are out of your element.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Dan Volker, admit it. You actually started this thread because you missed us.

Chilly (also a rec.scuba denizon back from the wars and also a threat survivor)

PS I've been diving with Dan though it was many years ago. He wasn't wearing a wetsuit and may not even have had any weights. he did like to dart around a lot though.

 

[DanMont]

I don't quite understand some of the points bought up at the start of the thread. Now discounting the whole temp. argument and the streamlining thing (yep a tri-lam is undoubtedly going to have more drag than a wetsuit, a crushed neoprene not so much).

One common solution for this large group, is to use huge weighting, so that it is easy to get down, and then on the bottom, on putting gas in it, they have so much weight on that as soon as they begin ascending, the air gets blown out of the OVP on the shoulder easily, because the pressure gets high in the suit....if it was a GUE style drysuit diver, with absolute minimum weight on, then little force works to push air out the opv, and only a small addition in bouyancy will cause tyhe drysuit to begin ascent without the diver wishing it....with the advanced skills of a GUE diver, this never becomes an issue, but without this advanced training, most divers need heavy weighting and a head up and feet down posture, in order to facilitate unwanted air build-up in the suit during ascent. Absence of this advanced skill has sent many less skilled drysuit divers feet first toward the surface --like an upside down polaris missile. Not safe!

Even with intermediate skills for low weight on the dry suit ( diver desires the perfection in buoyancy control and trim that is only feasible with minimal dry suit weighting) , many divers find they need to dive the dry suit all year long, or lose the reflexes and skills required.

I simply don't buy the issues surrounding competency to use a dry suit and weighting. Firstly what is this notion that you have to be GUE or have advanced training to understand how to properly weight yourself and maintain good buoyancy? Now admittedly I am a relative novice to all this compared to some of you guys posting but If it was really all that hard to manage drysuit buoyancy how have the thousands of divers who train in coldwater in a drysuit from scratch (i.e. the first open water I ever did was also the first time I used a drysuit) learned all the other aspects of diving whilst at the same time learning to use a drysuit ever manage to grasp them both. To add to this once you have learned how to use a drysuit why should you need to be diving all year round to maintain the competency? I dived in drysuits in March, then dived from July-September in wetsuits before switching back to drysuit in October, no issues here when going back to the drysuit. Obviously if it has been a few years you should get a refresher but then the same is normally recommended when you go diving normally after a break for a couple of years.

Secondly why should a drysuit diver automatically overweight? The idea is to use the appropriate amount of weight, and obviously in a drysuit the weight used is going to be more for this than in most wetsuits, but if a diver is overweighting so 'it is easy to get down' (as you put it) why should they be not be overweighting in a wetsuit to do exactly the same? Strikes me as not a drysuit issue but a training one ...

In reference to whether drysuits are useful to recreational divers in the tropics, I know I would have quite liked a drysuit when I was diving the GBR on a liveaboard. Air temps were only in the high teens and it was very windy, making pulling on a wet wetsuit not very pleasant and made me feel fairly chilly before even getting in the water (and this was during the day let alone on the night dive!). For day trips less of an issue I suspect and obviously not an issue when the air temp is high or there is no wind, but it just goes to show nice water temps. don't always go hand in hand with nice surface conditions!

So to move on to the whole drag issue, it seems to me that the average sub/tropical diver isn't going to be jetting about against currents no matter whether they are wearing a drysuit or wetsuit - so that's rather a moot point really isn't it?

Just my tuppence, from the sort of diver this post seemed to be aimed more at.

Dan

 

[boulderjohn]

I simply don't buy the issues surrounding competency to use a dry suit and weighting. Firstly what is this notion that you have to be GUE or have advanced training to understand how to properly weight yourself and maintain good buoyancy? Now admittedly I am a relative novice to all this compared to some of you guys posting but If it was really all that hard to manage drysuit buoyancy how have the thousands of divers who train in coldwater in a drysuit from scratch (i.e. the first open water I ever did was also the first time I used a drysuit) learned all the other aspects of diving whilst at the same time learning to use a drysuit ever manage to grasp them both.

Here's my theory, one that I have cultivated during a number of fairly recent threads.

If you go back a couple of years to the DIR-centered rec.scuba wars, you will see an interesting characteristic of those debates. The debate strategy included some sort of pathological need not only to promote the benefits of your point of view, it was also somehow deemed necessary to paint the opposing view as incredibly stupid and potentially fatal. The famed phrase "You're going to die if you...." is no exaggeration. For example of that strategy at work, there was (and is) a disagreement about what gas to breathe during the final stages of decompression--pure oxygen or a mix with 80% oxygen. The DIR group, led by George Irvine, preferred pure oxygen. Irvine could have explained his reasons for that preference while acknowledging the legitimate reasons behind the opposition (and there are legitimate reasons), but he instead published this document, a document still in use today. Please note the final reason he lists for his preference: "Only a card-carrying stroke would do somethng like this, and showing up with 80/20 is no different than wearing a sign on your back saying "I am a stroke, and have the papers to prove it". It announces to all the world that you have no clue, kind of like wearing clip-on suspenders or having dog dirt on your shoes."

Note that this final reason could be used word-for-word for almost any argument. In this case, take "80/20" out of the sentence and insert ""a dry suit," and you have the equivalent of the argument in this thread.

Dan was a good friend of George Irvine, and he participated eagerly in those skirmishes. I believe he absorbed the strategy of enhancing his positions by vilifying the opposition to the point that it is a reflex. It is not enough to say "I prefer this for the following reasons." You must make sure that the world knows that anyone who disagrees is "farm animal stupid," to use another of George's favorite descriptors. In this case, though, because GUE grew out of the DIR movement, it was necessary to exclude GUE-trained divers from the group of people who were going to die if they used dry suits. Everyone else is at risk, not because they really are at risk, but because it is not possible in this world to declare a preference without completely bashing those who disagree.