Dry Suit Diver

02 Jun 2014

I’ve got a lot of overtime coming up over the next few weeks and months, so I thought I would get some more diving booked in to have something to look forward to. Turns out I couldn’t do the weekend I was hoping for, but could do this weekend instead. Well, why not. Down to the lake for a second weekend. As you’ll know I did my Open Water in a wet suit, which was rather chilly. Almost all UK divers use a dry suit to stay warm, it’s simply too cold in the water - I was keen to give this a go as i did get cold. I was quite optimistic about just how much warmer a dry suit would be, turns out, quite a lot, it was actually rather comfortable!

I did three dives for my Dry Suit. I performed a confined water dive, where I practiced my skills, which were all fairly similar to that in a wet suit with the exception of the fit pivot and hover using the wet suit as buoyancy (instead of the BCD). It’s a strange thing to experience, and can most easily be explained as essentially wearing a big bag containing some air. This makes things interesting when you move in a certain direction, if you end up with your feet above your head then that will continue to be the ‘floaty’ part! Unlike a BCD where the bladders are basically in the same place. It’s odd, but I eventually got used to it.

I then did two open water dives, where i was able to go a bit deeper and practice neutral buoyancy. It was really good to get back out again, I really enjoyed being at the bottom and not being so cold!

One strange experience when first using a dry suit is being at the bottom with basically no air in the suit, ascending and all of a sudden having lots of air (which promptly took me by surprise!). I didn’t really think about it on my first dive, but felt a bit silly afterwards!

Really enjoyed training for this and now really, really want to got to Silfra in Iceland to do some cold water diving. Seriously, Google Silfra - the water is amazingly clear.