 Start Dry Suit Diving Today!
by
Jerry Otte
Contents
Even though most of my dives are now done in a dry suit, I stubbornly stayed
with my wetsuit well into my career as a scuba instructor. Like most divers, I
learned to dive in a wetsuit. Although I struggled to get into my wetsuits with
the rest of my diving friends, I became very comfortable in my wetsuits and
eventually mastered weighting and buoyancy. Dry suits scared me for several
reasons including what seemed to be the added complexity of diving dry. The dry
suit had extra parts my wetsuit did not have. I needed extra hoses on my
regulator, special valves, an undergarment, more weight, and maybe even a
different BCD or set of fins. And buoyancy seemed even more complex, which
stories of divers getting inverted did not help.
So I clung to my wetsuit until the father of one of my students
insisted that I certify his daughter in very early spring. The water was very
cold that weekend, so cold that his daughter suffered a mild case of hypothermia.
That is when I decided to invest in a dry suit and learn how to dive in it.
Today, I rarely dive in anything but a dry suit unless I am on a trip to a
tropical destination.
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