Last night I had my dry suit class and pool session. The class stuff is all pretty straight forward, but I've been told by many people that your first time in a dry suit is like starting all over. I always figured that as an exaggeration. Was I wrong.
The class was an interesting start. There are four of us taking the class. One guy has to work, so he's going to take the classroom/pool session next week. Another guy works third shift and had a late night call that kept way past his normal shift end time, so he couldn't make it. The other guy just never showed up. There were three instructors and me. No pressure there. Fortunately, the class material is pretty simple and I was well prepared.
After class we headed to the pool. Before last night, I had only been in dry suit once and that was last week to find one that fit for the class. Last night was my first time in the water in the suit. I had read the material, watched the DVD, talked with several dry suit divers, and read a lot of information on the Internet, so I felt that I was as prepared as I could be. And I suppose I was, but that doesn't really help you when you get wet - or hopefully don't get wet - for the first time.
So the first thing we have to do is get into the thing. The suit I used was a front entry suit, meaning it has a zipper in the front going from the left shoulder to the right hip. It's easy to get your feet and one arm in. The second arm isn't too bad, but then you have to squeeze your head through an opening that has to seal water out around your neck. It's a tight fit anyway, but to make things more interesting, you don't have a lot of slack to play with because your arms are already in the arms of the suit.
Anyway, we now have the suit on and zipped up. The next step is to get the excess air (or at least as much as you can) out of the suit. You do that by pulling open the neck seal and squatting down. Then you release the neck seal and stand up. Up until now, the dry suit has been relatively comfortable. Now the dry suit is squeezing up against your body. If you are claustrophobic, this might not be for you. But it's not over yet.
Now we get into the water. Since this is a pool and the first time in a dry suit, we left the gear on the side of the pool and just got in. Someone told me that just jumping in with a dry suit on can be pain full as the suit suddenly starts squeezing you in, well, let's just say sensitive areas. So I climbed in using the pool ladder. Now I'm feeling some suit squeeze. And I'm standing in three feet of water. I'm not looking forward to what this is going to feel like at 100 feet.
It's time to put our scuba gear on and start playing with the suit. We start off in the shallow end and swim to the deep end along the bottom of the pool. I'm immediately feeling out of control. I can't keep my feet down without considerable effort, kicking is almost impossible, and buoyancy control is something that I think I heard about once, but not something I can be accused of having.
I haven't decided yet whether or not the problem I was having with my fins was from my feet flopping around in the suit or the fins flopping around on the suit. Probably the former. I've decided that when I get my own suit, I'm going to get a better fit in the foot. The flopping caused my feet to cramp up, which is not comfortable in the best of circumstances.
The related problem was all the air in the suit kept going to my feet. Even when I went from standing to horizontal, the air quickly migrated from my back to my feet. Trying to get my feet down so I could kick was impossible. I was able to do a cave diving (bent knee) kick, but the basic flutter kick wasn't happening. Picking a dry suit with soft booties and a separate boot seems to be the answer to both of my problems. I could use ankle weights to solve the kicking problem, but it seems highly inefficient. Kind of like driving with your parking brake on.
The final problem, buoyancy control, was the only one I really made any progress on. After we went through the drills, which included standing me on my head and inflating the dry suit to practice rolling right side up and dumping the air before you get to the surface, I got a chance to just swim around trying to get my buoyancy and trim under control. I almost managed to get my buoyancy to an acceptable level, but my trim isn't even close yet. I'm all over the place. So I need to work on that.
Doc, my instructor, caught me off guard with and OOA signal. I was confused because I was trying to figure out whether or not this was some kind of dry suit specific signal. He gave it to me again, so I handed him my octo and he later scolded me for being so slow about it. That's what you call a learning opportunity.
In the end Doc said that he felt my acclimation was good for a first time. I sure don't, but he's the instructor. Of course, he probably says that to all but the really bad students.
A couple of final notes: in the humid pool room at the YMCA, wearing the dry suit was like wearing your own little personal oven. It was OK once I was in the water, but out of the water was brutal. I'm dreading what it would be like on a hot summer day prepping for a nice long deep dive to 35 degree water.
Second, the neoprene neck seal didn't seem to fit me too well. I was pretty wet when I got out. Craig, the shop manager, had a similar experience with the same kind of suit a few weeks ago. I'm going to go with latex seals on mine. When I got out of the suit I was soaked. Some of it was sweat, but I'm betting that most of it was pool water.
With the classroom and pool session behind me, I get to try it for real in a couple of weeks when we do the training dives. We'll be combining the dives with the Deep Diver specialty dives. Regardless of how bad I am in the dry suit, I'll be glad to have it on for the deep dives in the quarry. Brrrr...
