My First Drysuit

[Jeffman]

Hello,

I'm just getting into SCUBA diving in my area (Vancouver, Canada) and am now building up my own equipment. Right now I have a mask, snorkel, and brand new Tusa xpert zoom fins (along with deep sea boots). My friend and I are about to take our PADI open water certification, and have recently been snorkeling at one of the dive spots we hope we will go to. Right now we only have shorty wetsuits, which are fine on the surface, but if you dive down 10-20 feet, it’s a different story. The water temperature drops and it is only possible to stay down for 10 seconds. As this is as warm as the Vancouver water will get, I would like to look into a dry suit of my own. I will be taking the dry suit certification with my PADI. What I'm getting at is I want to ask a few questions about fry suits. My first is, could I free dive with a dry suit, as in just go snorkeling. If I had the money, I would look into a wetsuit for snorkeling, and a dry suit for diving but I don’t at the moment. My dive shop has a special for a Tusa Titanium dry suit for $600 CAN I think. Would free diving with a dry suit be very hard, or should I really consider getting both a dry and wet suit?

Thanks for your help,
Jeff

 

[Brandon]

Hey there Jeffman,

I live in Alaska myself, and drysuits are a requirement up here. Our water temperatures in the winter get down to about 37 degrees fahrenheit. Pretty nippy.

In response to your question, while snorkeling is possible in a drysuit, it would be more difficult to freedive in one. If you're talking about shallow freedives, it would be possible, but on deeper ones (thinking greater then about 40 feet), the suit squeeze could be painful. You're also going to have to deal with wearing a larger amount of weight, which may present a problem in itself.

Personally, I haven't heard of a freediver who wore a drysuit, and I imagine the majority of posters on this board are going to recommend you get a drysuit for diving, and a semi-dry or wetsuit for freediving.

-Brandon.

 

[jbichsel]

years ago while diving. As there was no way to inflate the suit, sqeeze became noticable early on. At about 40 feet, it was quite uncomfortable. Below that, it hurt. So my guess on freediving in one would be that it would not be a pleasant event unless you stayed 30 or above.

 

[SubMariner]

My dive shop has a special for a Tusa Titanium dry suit for $600 CAN I think. Would free diving with a dry suit be very hard, or should I really consider getting both a dry and wet suit?

What is the suit made of?

How much weight you have to wear with it, what undergarments, and how much suit squeeze you'll experience with it all depend on what the material comprises the drysuit.

As others have mentioned, you can get some serious drysuit squeeze below a certain depth. But the effect is more pronounced in shell drysuits than in neoprene. The "con" is that you have to wear significantly more weight with a neoprene drysuit than with a shell, REGARDLESS of what you are doing.

Personally we always had only two suits, even when we lived in Canada: a full length 3mm suit and a drysuit. Those two covered all our diving needs.

~SubMariner~

 

[Jeffman]

When I said free diving, I meant no deeper then 30-25 feet.

The suit at the store is neoprene.

I think I will wait until New Year to see if I'm diving a lot. I will just rent for now.

Thanks for all your help.