St. Lawrence + 7mm wetsuit = how long a season?

[pufferfish]

Col.Cluster once bubbled...
Pufferfish

I just had to pull this one on you. I wondered how long it would take you to bite on this one. You have just demonstrated better then I or anyone else could ever put into words what is wrong with everything you post to the board. A small description of which follows:

You are far too predictable and I will leave it at that.

All the best
CC

James Pate, aka CC, you should really label your posts with a coke alert. Let me get this straight. You post a reply to Groundhog regarding your thoughts on argon and your personal experience with argon in cold deco water. Actually that was interesting. But all the while the post was really a set up to entrap Pufferfish to show how predictable I am. And there was even a pot to boot betting on the times I might chime in. Come on you can do better than that piece of Scubaboard fiction . I am flattered though that you would actually use your valuable time thinking up such schemes and that I feature so prominently in your day to day thoughts. Didn't you say a few days back that you had a new teething baby you had to attend to?

You may have changed your name James, but Colonel Cluster's posts still look and read the same. If there is only one guy on "top" then his voice 'signature' is pretty easy to identify.

Now on to something more productive. I'd be curious to know your thoughts on the relationship between position in the water column (vertical vs. horizontal) and warmth perception with argon use. Some have said that when horizontal in the water column most of the gas in the drysuit is over the neck, back, and legs creating a much larger volume of gas to insulate these areas. Argon with its lower heat transfer capacity than air in such a large volume over the diver's backside while horizontal may make a significant difference with respect to heat loss in cold water.

 

[Col.Cluster]

Actually Puffer you are the FOCUS as you are once again misleading divers. You are leading divers to believe that there is no benefit to the use of argon. In doing so you are encouraging the inexperienced among us to dive the extremes of winter (33f water) without all the benefits of the best protection available. You are encouraging divers to expose themselves to a higher risk of hypothermia, which in turn exposes divers to a higher risk of DCI. As much as we all find humour in your posts, we still have a sense of responsibility to correctly inform divers when we see you posting disinformation that can endanger others. We just exposed you for the charlatan you are. And yes we do have fun in the process.

In response to your question regarding using argon or air to insulate, we do not use either as an insulator. We use quality thermal underwear to insulate against the cold. We use the inflation gas to remove the squeeze of the suit as depth increase. Therefore there is no large volume of gas to worry about. To give you an idea of the limited amount of gas that we do use: 6cft of argon lasts most of us for 3 to 4 dives to 100ft. Since there is a limited amount of gas in the suit it is vital to use the gas the least heat transfer rate. Therefore selecting and using the gas with the least heat transfer rate becomes as critical to the dive as the selection of the appropriate breathing gas. This is my final post regarding Argon. It works and has a real impact on long term exposure to cold water. I strongly recommend the use of it, if you plan to dive throughout the winter in the river.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know how long a person can survive in 33f water without an exposure suit?

All the best
CC

 

[pufferfish]

Tom R once bubbled...
ROTFLMAO here,

The Col is with us in Kingston and JP is in Toronto with a cold, but you know what they say about assumptions.

Tom

And what do they say about assumptions Tom? I think we have correctly assumed all along you were Jimmy B. And all this posturing from the shop that on numerous occasions boasted they only use their real names on posts and chided the rest of us for not doing so.

Have a look here at the 7th post
Case #2 of scuba induced multiple personality disorder

The voice 'signature' is classic Tom, short reply and a little underwater history to boot.

Someone call Marvintpa again for that scorecard as we have case #2 of scuba-induced MPD from NTD. I think it is time to quarantine these guys so the disease outbreak doesn't spread any further into the Ontario diver population.

 

[artw]

Sorry to hijack your argon thread -
but my wetsuit season is over now, the water was 59F at Ivy Lea today in the St. Lawrence River

 

[pufferfish]

Col.Cluster once bubbled...
Actually Puffer you are the FOCUS as you are once again misleading divers. You are leading divers to believe that there is no benefit to the use of argon. In doing so you are encouraging the inexperienced among us to dive the extremes of winter (33f water) without all the benefits of the best protection available. You are encouraging divers to expose themselves to a higher risk of hypothermia, which in turn exposes divers to a higher risk of DCI. As much as we all find humour in your posts, we still have a sense of responsibility to correctly inform divers when we see you posting disinformation that can endanger others. We just exposed you for the charlatan you are. And yes we do have fun in the process.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know how long a person can survive in 33f water without an exposure suit?

All the best
CC

So I am the focus once again of misleading divers am I James? Like some kind of Pied Piper Pufferfish with all the dive lemmings following blindly behind ready to leap over the cliff into that cold icy water without argon on board at my very command, is that it? I hope your post is a real bad attempt at humour as if not James you are getting pretty desperate here with your gratuitous assertions and collateral damage of insulting other divers on this board who are quite capable of making their own rational decisions on what type of exposure protection is best for them. I hardly think I am to blame for misleading anyone about argon use with a few links on the topic that don't happen to mesh with your worldview and that this information somehow might endanger the 'inexperienced amongst us' who might be diving argon,... now that makes a lot of sense. Why don't we wait and see what *other* board members have to say about this dangerous disinformation campaign against argon use mounted by the Pied Piper Pufferfish before you comment any further

As for your question on survival expectancy related to water temperature that is a difficult one to answer with an exact time as like with DCS there are lots of individual risk factors and also the intraindividual risk can vary from day to day. Of those survivors from the Titanic with life jackets few lasted more than forty minutes. I am looking at one of those survival charts for the naked person in one degree water, and although the graph resolution is not great the survival time is less than an hour. Something as simple as one's will to survive can have a huge effect on outcome. Core temp prior to immersion is also very important. Obviously the amount of 'natural' insulation one has is likely one of the most important factors. The answer though is probably somewhere between fifteen minutes and forty five minutes. Here is a link to a NOAA page on some of this stuff.

NOAA Cold Water Dive Physiology

 

[taz22]

artw once bubbled...
Sorry to hijack your argon thread -
but my wetsuit season is over now, the water was 59F at Ivy Lea today in the St. Lawrence River

Ah...come on....still lots of wetsuit diving left.

 

[Tom R]

Well some people dive, some puffers talk about diving .

I guess life is good

Tom R

 

[Warren_L]

I just got back from diving the Munson this morning in K-town. It was still 59 F at 110'. Now that's down-right balmy!

 

[diverdeb001]

Right now the water is still ok it's the air that's cold!!!! A good fitting hood and warm gloves make a big difference when diving wet. A core warmer over a full one piece 7 ml suit can also prolong the season. A nice warm place to go after really helps too!! db

 

[pufferfish]

Tom R once bubbled...
Well some people dive, some puffers talk about diving .

I guess life is good

Tom R

Tom that doesn't sound like you. Getting a little testy in quarantine are we

Actually I work every second weekend plus my weekday work so as much as I'd love to be diving more it just doesn't happen. Zipping somewhere for the day to dive from TO is just not worthwhile.

Next weekend though we hope to dive a bunch of bridges on the Rideau Canal just north of Kingston as there is no boat traffic, possibly off Cartwright's Point, and maybe down to Brockville for a few wrecks weather pending. Just picked up some nice new neoprene boots today.

Any suggestions were I might find some accredited air up that way?