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).
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
Dan,
You reference your dives on a liveaboard with temps in the low teens.....I am talking about the tropics...you seem to be talking about diving the Great White North
As to the skills and weighting issue...and most divers....as you dive more, you will begin to realize that the descriptor of "most divers" is equivalent to "mediocre and worse" ....the "average" is no place to strive for
. Thank the magic of mass market dive instruction...
Much better skills are not that hard to come by, and the first step is awareness that they exist....The coolest thing about GUE and their Fundamentals class--what this means to skills of pretty much all recreational divers....and most tech divers.....is not so much that they have to take GUE...it is that GUE raised the awareness about skills that were lacking, and how they could be taught....and now these skills are being taught at many other agencies....or at least a decent subset of these skills that can make a huge difference to diver adventure, safety, and to prevent damaging or silting the bottom.
For you to understand the drag issue, you will need to go to some place with big marine life and drift currents, and then have at least one diver you can see that is slick and that can demonstrate what can be done.
I can't ask you to travel to Palm Beach for me to show you --I realize Palm Beach is a long way from Britain. But the demo is the way to show this, not attempted intellectualizing of this.
One of the easiest examples I would show you---- is if you need to wait for a photographer buddy in a drift current--if you lie down in the sand just leeward of the reef object being shot( this is very common option, especially with patch reefs), you will see that a drysuit will grab the current, and you can be somersaulted over--or at minimum you can't relax....with a slick wetsuit, you lie down and don't even feel the current, so your heart rate can drop to low resting rates, breathing rate will be good for long bottom times.....
Another big one is when we swim from the offshore side of a big reef ledge, where it is 90 feet deep and where we dove for maybe 10 minutes initially....current is going North as are you.....and the reef goes with it...the East side is the offshore side--going to deep water...the West side is the inshore ledge, often dramatic...the Crown--the middle of the reef, is often 40 feet deep..lush, and this is where sea turtles are most visible--foraging or sleeping....we cross the crown--80 yards to 300 yards wide depending on where on the reefline you are....and this is crosswise to the current...and you end up at the 55 foot deep to 60 foot deep inshore ledge...at least you do with a slick wetsuit...with a TLS350 trilam suit, many divers just can't cope with the huge drag from the cross current, and they can never get to the inshore ledge. We swim across pushing big camera, and still get to the inshore ledge with a heart rate in the 60's....with no work, because of the lack of drysuit drag.....without thye cameras it would be even less work, but we are there to shoot, so not an option
I will sometimes tuck my Aquatic housing for Canon5 D Mark 2 under my armpit area like I would a stage bottle, to get most of it out of the cross current, allowing most of the drag from the camera to dissappear....allowing easy and relaxing point A to point B travel...If I see a turtle on the way across the crown, the camera is in front of me in one second, flat
After an hour, you ascent a mile or many miles from where you began, and the boat is there to pick you up( they have been following a float flag pulled by a group leader.
Drag IS a big deal, but you should see this in person, with a diver with the slick gear to show how little effect the current will have on a slick diver--how little they will exert to go anywhere they want--to follow any marine life they want, or to explore any oasis of life they see in the distance, in any direction.
