Drysuit in the pool

I just wanted to write down a few first impressions of what it's like to dive with a drysuit for the first time in a pool. Mark and I joined a Blue Water Aquatics class a couple of nights ago. Putting on my DUI CLXse (see my Nov. 3rd post) drysuit was a lot easier this time around. Randy, the Blue Water Aquatics store owner, quickly criticized the half-assed cuts that I made on the latex seals on both mine and Mark's suits, and said it was going to be an expensive mistake. Typical Randy. I don't know if he's a little miffed we didn't buy the suits from his store or not. There is still a tiny bit of room on the seals to cut some more, so I am not worried. (Nicks on a latex seal are stress risers and will quickly shorten the life our one's seal.)

I wore a total of 18 lbs (including a set of 1 lb ankle weights) coupled with a 47 cu. foot tank. I was a little underweighted because, I had to open my exhaust all the way to keep a little negatively buoyant. I'm going to try the 18-20 lbs to the ocean because the added weight of the high-pressure steel 80 tanks that I own should compensate for the additional buoyancy of the sea water.

I think Mark had the most dramatic experiences drysuit diving in the pool. He has not yet read the drysuit course manual, despite the fact that we are supposed to go to the ocean tomorrow. He was pretty surprised about the suit squeeze at your feet when your feet are lower than your chest, and by the effort of maintaining the position of the air bubble in the drysuit. He was also surprised by being instructed to not use the BCD to maintain neutral buoyancy underwater. He asked me if this was what the PADI manual instructed, and I was a little flustered to answer him in the affirmative, because he really should have read the manual.

My own impression is that drysuit diving doesn't feel much more removed from the water than wet suit diving. Also, I didn't feel like I had good trim at all. The air bubble wanted to float my feet up, despite the ankle weights. I found myself naturally frog kicking instead of flutter kicking because frog kicking naturally bends my legs, restricting the flow of air into my legs, and also the trajectory is slightly head up, keeping the air bubble in the torso area instead of the legs. I am looking for solutions for maintaining good trim, other than putting heavier ankle weights on because I don't think I want to convert to frog kicking permanently. Theoretically, frog kicking would mean converting to blade fins from my Apollo split fins, which is undesirable (split fins are so efficient in the water when flutter kicking).

I agree with Mark when saying that drysuit diving forces one to pay more attention to trim in the water than wetsuit diving, which isn't such a big deal once you gain experience, but for now is added mental tasking that wouldn't exist as much with wetsuit diving. Drysuit diving forces you to dive like the sluggish, perfectly horizontal cave diver, rather than the acrobatic wetsuited tropical diver. Not to knock cave divers or tech divers, who are beautiful underwater, but I would rather be able to do sea lion acrobatics if I wanted to.

Any thoughts, suggestions from those of you who remember wetsuit diving?

Also, my BARE thinsulate undergarment kept me toasty warm in the pool, which does NOT bode well for the ocean. I expected to be overheated in the 80 degree pool. I will probably wear the extra high performance fleece that Divetank threw into the package underneath the Thinsulate undergarment. Funny, Richard at Divetank swore to me that the BARE Thinsulate Hi-Loft undergarment was what they wore up in British Columbia. Dammit, I should have gotten the BARE Super Hi-Loft, which wasn't available at the time.

Once done with the pool dives, our first time unzipping our drysuits at the surface was pretty dramatic. Mark and I both let out audible exclamations as we felt the onrush of air on our bodies. We both felt like we had just come out of vacuum sealing. Upon unzipping, we both realized we had slight leaks up to our elbows. We were told that we needed to push back our wrist seals back further. Even more reason to get DUI drygloves once we rip our seals due to my poor craftmanship!