Diving Dry – Extend Your Diving Season and Open Up More Locations Diving Dry

Diving Dry – Extend Your Diving Season and Open Up More Locations

Eric Keibler Sep 24, 2021

Ice Diving in New Hampshire

Ann likes to say, “it’s not the water temperature that is the problem it is all about what you wear.” In Texas in the summer lake diving is generally diving in skins or light wetsuits. As the water temperature drops it is time to start modifying what you wear in the water. Slight temperature drops may lead you to add ticker suits, hoods or hooded vests to your underwater ensemble. But eventually, the temperature drops too much and you will either stop diving for the season or you can switch to a dry suit. This way you can keep changing what you wear to stay warm without adding more and more neoprene.

By adding a drysuit to your dive wear, you also open up colder diving locations like California, the Pacific Northwest, Maine, the Great Lakes or even New Hampshire for an Ice Diving trip! Now, for those of you who grew up in colder climates, this may sound silly but the water temperatures in these locations is generally colder than most southerners want to attempt in a neoprene wetsuit.

Ice Diving in New Hampshire

What is a drysuit?

So, what exactly is a drysuit you ask? Well, to make it simple, it is a full suit with integrated socks, much like a set of kid’s winter pajamas, and seals at the wrist and neck to keep the water out. To keep you from getting squeezed on the way down (remember Boyles Law) they have a small valve that lets you add air to the inside of the suit and another to let you vent the extra air on the way up. The seals can be neoprene but are more commonly latex or silicone.

Drysuits can be made from a variety of materials most commonly neoprene or rubber. But remember, thick neoprene tends to float so unless it is compressed or crushed, it adds buoyancy in addition to the air inside the suit. You can have a full exposed rubber suit, but these suits are susceptible to punctures and tears. A hybrid product uses a nylon backed material to build the suit. These suits are some form of trilaminate material which means that the rubber layer is sandwiched between two layers of nylon or some other fabric. This way the rubber is protected from abrasion and thereby reduces the leaking issues.

To keep you warm in the water, these suits use a combination or undergarments and air to retain your body heat. This differs from wetsuits which use a layer of water warmed by your body to help keep you warm.

Trilaminate suits have the advantage of not adding buoyancy themselves and allowing the greatest variety of undergarment configurations. By adding or subtracting undergarment layers you can tune your suit to the water temperature and your personal warmth needs. These undergarments also help move moisture away from your body to help keep you warm.

What are undergarments?

What are these undergarments? Well they are generally synthetic fabrics engineered to move moisture out away from your body and to trap air warmed by your body. We usually start with an underlayer like Fourth Element’s J2 base layer or Bare’s Ultrawarmth Base Layer and then add a fleece type material like Bares SB Mid Layer or Fourth Element’s Xerotherm. For diving in this area that may be all you need but for colder dives you may want to add thicker suits which will add more warmth. Bare, DUI and Fourth Element all make a variety of undergarments in various thicknesses.

Is size important?

One of the things that will make diving in a drysuit more comfortable and easier, is to have a properly sized suit. Let’s face it, we are not all the same size. And, stock suits will not fit everyone. Have a properly sized suit will make your diving more fun because the suit will not have air pockets caused by too much fabric or will not allow for enough warm air because it is cut too small. So, since having a properly sized suit is better, you can get one fitted to you. These made-to-measure suits make for a more relaxed dive where you are warmer and have better buoyancy control. The downside, of course, is that they cost more. But hey, if you go diving more the cost per dive decreases so it just means you have to go diving more!

Do I need a class?

Drysuit diving is not difficult but it is different. As such, you need to enroll in a drysuit course. In this program, you will learn a little more about drysuits, about undergarment selection and most of all how to add and dump air to make your diving in the suits comfortable.

So, if you are ready to open up new dive locations and extend your local diving season, then it is time to start drysuit diving. Enroll in a program now and find out what it is like to dive dry.