I made my first out of class drysuit dive today, and had a problem that seems rather odd to me. I was able to drop down (albiet slowly) and wasn't having any problems with bouancy or trim all the way down to 40 feet or so, adding a puff of air here and there to ease the squeeze. We cruised around a bit and after about 10 mins started to come up a slope that put us at about 30 feet. That's when the trouble started. I vented some air, but couldn't get neutral, so I proceeded to vent every bit of air that I could squeeze out of the suit (even going vertical, head up), yet I was still very positive. I checked to make sure that all of my weights were in place (12# on the belt, 1# on each foot) and all was good. I ended up having to swim at a serious down-angle to keep my depth, and of course ended up wearing myself out pretty well. I signalled my buddy while we were next to a bakery cart on the bottom, at which time I got myself into a sitting/kneeling position using the cart as an anchor to rest and see if there was any more air trapped somewhere. I could feel my suit starting to squeeze hard (like when I first entered the water) from my feet up my legs, but very, very slowly - maybe at 1/2 inch per sec or so, and little air resulted from venting. Thankfully my buddy understood my situation and quickly anchored a line to the cart, grabbed hold of me and we made a slow and controlled ascent (in spite of my constant sculling downwards to try and keep both of our shoulders from coming out of socket from the force of being so positive), with normal venting, etc., otherwise I would have shot to the surface out of control. A very tiring and somewhat embarrasing experience.
I've been stewing about what might have gone wrong, and I can only think of two things. First, I was not wearing (undergarments) what I wore to the OW portion of my class, in class I only had slacks and a rather thin long sleeve shirt, allowing air to pass through my clothes easily and compression of the clothes to happen more readily - tonight I was wearing a full set of thermals, a second thermal shirt, a heavy sweater with slacks, as well as much thicker socks than the first time. This may have made it hard for me to evac air from all of those layers after adding air to them (I was very squeezed after doing my pre-dive "crunch" to get all the air out of the suit and when I first got into the water, but never got back to that level of squeeze, even when I was trying to.) The second and most obvious is that I probably need to add more weight to my belt, but this kind of depends on the first possibility - if I can wear something different that is easier to get air out of UW, then I'd rather do that than add a ton of weight.
Any suggestions or nuggets of wisdom would be greatly appreciated! :grad:
I've been stewing about what might have gone wrong, and I can only think of two things. First, I was not wearing (undergarments) what I wore to the OW portion of my class, in class I only had slacks and a rather thin long sleeve shirt, allowing air to pass through my clothes easily and compression of the clothes to happen more readily - tonight I was wearing a full set of thermals, a second thermal shirt, a heavy sweater with slacks, as well as much thicker socks than the first time. This may have made it hard for me to evac air from all of those layers after adding air to them (I was very squeezed after doing my pre-dive "crunch" to get all the air out of the suit and when I first got into the water, but never got back to that level of squeeze, even when I was trying to.) The second and most obvious is that I probably need to add more weight to my belt, but this kind of depends on the first possibility - if I can wear something different that is easier to get air out of UW, then I'd rather do that than add a ton of weight.
Any suggestions or nuggets of wisdom would be greatly appreciated! :grad:
