Whites Fusion Sport Drysuit

I've had a meandering history with this suit.  I first gave it a shot about a year ago and was warned beforehand that getting into it was a bit difficult.  A bit difficult?  Running 7.6 miles straight uphill in the Mount Washington Road Race was a bit difficult.  Getting into this suit was beyond that.  The first time I tried, it was so tight and form fitting that by the time I finally zipped in, my face was beet-red, I was covered with sweat, and could feel my heartbeat pounding in my temples.

I figured it would get easier with practice, though, and so took it out on about a half a dozen dives. And, indeed, putting it on did get easier.  Marginally.  Underwater, I loved it.  It was more flexible than any suit, wet or dry, I had ever worn.  But putting it on was just more hassle than it was worth and so I said a somewhat reluctant 'goodbye' to the Whites.  Not long after that, a buddy of mine who had bought the suit a short time after came to the same conclusion.

And that was pretty much the last I thought about the Whites drysuit until this summer, when I made a dive up in Eastport with a Canadian friend.  We had gotten to the site well ahead of slack tide and so had taken our time, shooting the sh*t and gearing up.  All in all, a pretty relaxed afternoon.  It was only later, when I looked at the photos I had taken, that I realized he was wearing a Whites, even though at no point had I seen him struggling, let alone appearing in need of CPR, while gearing up.

And that got me thinking.  Maybe Whites, in their zeal to emphasize the form-fitting nature of their suit, had pushed the envelope a bit too much and were actually sizing them too small.  Now, I have no inside information here so this is just speculation on my part.  But when I decided to give the Whites drysuit another shot, instead of struggling to get into the suit that their sizing chart said was right for me, I bumped it up a size, choosing a suit they said would fit a man who weighed up to 210 pounds, even though I weigh only 155.

And what a difference a size makes.  The first time I put it on, not only did I slip into it easily, but it fit like a glove.  Underwater, I don't feel as sleek and hydrodynamic as I did with the smaller suit, but I still move around very easily in it -- more so than I have in any other brand or model of drysuit.

A couple of quick points about it.  Whites describes the material of the suit as "heavy duty, abrasion resistant," and, for all I know, that's exactly what it is.  I have my doubts, though.  It just doesn't feel substantial enough to be called heavy duty.  I'm sure it will be fine for typical diving but it probably wouldn't be my choice if I were doing a lot of wreck diving.  Again, I might be wrong there.  And much like Aqua Lung's (Whites parent company) Solafx wetsuit (the best wetsuit I've ever worn), the neck and torso pulls straight over your head, allowing you to put both arms in at the same time (making the process very easy) and it then zippers in an arc across your chest.  All very nice.

I would definitely recommend the Whites Fusion Sport drysuit for diving in the northeast, with the proviso that you pay a lot of attention to sizing when trying it on. If the chart says it fits but your head says it doesn't, try a size up.  Obviously, this is a suit that should be bought at a shop, not on-line. Actually, everything should be bought at your local shop rather than on-line but that's another story. And at a base price of $1400, it's also a pretty good value compared to other suits on the market.

Waterproof G1 5mm Gloves & Fourth Element 5mm Gloves

If you read my review of Waterproof’s G1 7mm three-finger mitts (http://shinesdiveblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/waterproof-g1-7mm-three-finger-mitt.html), then you know I have a pretty high opinion of this company.  So I looked forward to trying their G1 5mm five-finger gloves.  As much as I love the three-finger mitts, by design, they cause some loss of dexterity and tactile sense, which the five-finger gloves, by design, won’t.  The question was, in what temperature water could I comfortably wear them.

First, a bit of background.  Over the last few years, my favorite five-finger glove has been the Fourth Element 5mm.  Not only are these form-fitting gloves virtually indestructible, they cause almost no loss of dexterity or tactile sense.  And they’re very cool looking.  If Spiderman were a diver, they’d be his glove of choice.  But the one time I wore them in 48-degree water, my hands were pretty cold.  I now only wear them when I know the water is going to be consistently above 51/52 degrees. 

Now back to the Waterproof gloves.  They’re the same high-quality construction as the Waterproof mitts, with the main difference being the lack of an inner seal to help minimize water flow.  Obviously, this means that they aren’t going to be as warm as the mitts but it does makes them easier to get on.

Waterproof G1 5mm gloves

I’ve now worn them on about a dozen dives and, of course, have found that I have more dexterity and tactile sense with them than I do with the mitts, although not as much as I do with the Fourth Element gloves.  The first time I wore them, the water temperature was 44 degrees and that turned out to be a bit too cold.  On the rest of the dives, water temps were 46 degrees and up and, on all of them, my hands were fine.  Dive times ranged from 45 to 65 minutes.  Temperature-wise, that’s outstanding.

Add it all up and what you get is a glove that I love – but not to the point of tossing my Fourth Elements.  Both of these gloves are great but have their advantages and disadvantages over each other, depending on the conditions.

With this in mind, my glove strategy going forward is pretty clear.  When water temps are below 46 degrees, I’ll wear the Waterproof mitts for maximum warmth; when they’re 46 degrees or above, I’ll switch to the Waterproof gloves to gain more dexterity and tactile sense while still staying warm; and when they’re above 52 degrees – the temperature at which I generally switch to a wetsuit anyway – I’ll switch to the Fourth Element gloves to get as much dexterity and tactile sense as possible.

Obviously, I’d recommend both of these gloves for diving in coldish water.  With the Waterproof gloves, your hands will be warmer in colder water; and with the Fourth Element gloves, you’ll have a bit more dexterity and tactile sense.   The optimum situation would be to get both and switch them out as conditions warrant.

Fourth Element 5mm gloves

Waterproof G1 7mm Three-Finger Mitt Review

The last time I wore wetsuit mitts with a drysuit was way back in February, 2001.   I came out of the water, my fingers, as always, painful and cold, and knew something had to be done.  I went home, packed up the suit, and sent it in to have dry gloves attached.

Problem solved, right?  Wrong.  In the 13 years since, anytime water temps dip down into the 30s, my fingers are only marginally less cold than they were with the wetsuit mitts: not exactly the great leap forward I’d hoped for.  There just isn’t enough room inside dry gloves for sufficient insulation to keep fingers warm. 

Obviously, after 13 years (13 YEARS!), it’s time to try something new.  And that something would be the Waterproof G1 7mm three-finger mitts. Technically, these aren’t wetsuit mitts.  They’re semi-dry mitts.  By definition, though, semi-dry means wet, but … whatever.  When you’re desperate, you’re desperate, and coming off the coldest diving winter I can remember, I’m desperate.

I’ve now worn the Waterproof G1 7mm mitts on four dives, all in the 60-minute range, all in water hovering around 38 degrees, and I have to say that I’m speechless.  I am without speech.  At all times during these dives, my hands were very comfortable.  Had I made these same dives with my old dry gloves, my fingers would have been stingingly cold.

These are sensational mitts and a quick look will tell you why.  They’re as well made as a glove can be, with well-stitched seams that are in no obvious hurry to unravel, tough neoprene seals that minimize water flow, and soft, flexible lining material that makes them easy to get on and off.

Not only were my hands comfortable, but I had enough dexterity and tactile sense to operate all camera controls.  Working the shutter release and various dials is a no-brainer, but even pushing the focus selector buttons on the back of my housing – five small buttons arranged in a circle approximately 1/8 of an inch apart, is not a problem.

If you’re a northeast diver, you may not be familiar with this company, Waterproof.  I know I wasn’t.  And that’s a shame.  There seem to be only two shops in the New England region that carry their line.  Please … this has to change.  Few things will consistently keep a diver out of the water like being cold.  Conversely, few things will consistently keep us in the water like being warm.  Waterproof’s G1 7mm mitts are a huge step forward in this direction and I can’t wait to try more of their stuff.  Next up in a week or so, their G1 5mm 5-finger gloves.

The G1 7mm mitts come in six different sizes and retail for about $80.  I highly, highly recommend them for cold-water diving.

Eqp Review -- Faded Glory "Rock Boots"

Years ago, DUI introduced the Rock Boot – a canvas high-top sneaker to be worn with drysuits that are fitted with neoprene socks. Believe it or not, it’s a concept I’ve always considered to be brilliant. (As you may know, I have a little bit of a problem with DUI. I think the quality of their products has gone steadily downhill over the years, and their customer service is completely in the crapper. But I digress ... back to the Rock Boot.)

The concept works for shore divers because we’re constantly walking over uneven rocks while carrying quite a bit of weight and it’s nice to have a sturdy sole underfoot. It’s also better than having a boot attached directly to the suit because, when the rock boot wears out, you just get a new pair, rather than having to send the whole suit in to have new boots attached.

Of course, the brilliance of DUI’s thinking pretty much ended there and they immediately began adding unnecessary features and jacking up the price (in my opinion). And it didn’t take long for me, sick of paying over $100 for what looked like a pair of Converse All Stars, to just go out and buy a pair of Converse All Stars.

They were not, of course, identical and at first I was concerned that the lack of the above-mentioned features would doom the All Stars for diving. The two big ones were the lack of finger loops on the backs of the shoes, and the lack of that plastic thingy used to secure the laces rather than tying them. Wrong on both counts. It turned out that it takes no more effort to pull on shoes that don’t have a loop, and the lack of that plastic thingy made it easier, and more practical, to tie the laces in a regular bow knot rather than cinching that thingy down and then wrapping the extra lacings around your ankles.

But even when those issues turned out to be non-issues, there was still a problem with the All Stars -- they just weren’t designed to fit a foot that was already ensconced in a neoprene sock with a thermal sock underneath. My feet are size 10/10.5 (my left foot is size 10 and my right is 10.5 -- yes, it’s a hassle) and the only way I could make a pair of All Stars fit was to buy a size 11.5, pull out the insoles, and then cut the top of the toe box out of the right shoe.

This may sound like a lot of extra work but considering that I could buy them on Ebay for $20 a pair, and I wasn’t giving any more of my money to DUI, it was all worthwhile. That’s me on the right in my All Stars with Andy Martinez. In addition to saving money, just look at how much more stylish I am in my reds than Andy is in whatever he has on his feet. But notice also how the top out of the toe box is cut out of the right shoe and how I could really only lace up the upper half of the shoes.

Still, I was happy with my All Stars -- until I saw a pair of Faded Glory sneakers at Walmart. I couldn’t help but be intrigued by their very wide toe boxes. And at $12.50 a pair, how could I go wrong.

I bought a size 11, brought them home, pulled out the insoles to make more room inside (very easy since they’re barely glued), and voila! just like that I had a perfect pair of drysuit shoes with no further alterations required.

I’m now on my second pair of Faded Glorys. They’re easy to put on and take off, and are comfortable whether I’m on the surface walking around or in the water kicking with fins on. They also take quite a beating. The photos below are of the pair I just bought and the older pair that has 125 dives on them. That’s the same amount of dives I used to get out of DUI’s Rock Boots -- at almost one-tenth the cost. As you can see, the right shoe of the old pair is more worn than the left (perhaps because of the size difference of my feet) and the tongue has ripped away from the rubber toe. That’s not really much of an issue, though, and I’ll probably get another 20 dives out these guys before switching. 

As you can also see, they are not high tops. At first I was concerned that the low back would chafe against the drysuit sock but that hasn’t happened. I also thought they might feel less secure on my feet than the high tops but that’s also not the case. If you insist, though, Faded Glory does make high tops and they cost a whopping $3 more (that’s $15.50 a pair!).

In fact, I also wear the Faded Glorys when I’m diving wet, over my wet suit boots. It makes entries and exits easier at rocky sites but, more importantly, When I switch back and forth between diving wet and diving dry, I don't need to worry about switching fins. If not, it would then just be a matter of time before I showed up at a dive with the wrong set of fins. And the Faded Glorys fit very nicely over the wetsuit boots (my wetsuit boots have very little tread on them).

The bottom line: I like the Faded Glorys a lot and will never go back to DUI’s Rock Boots. They make for a great dive shoe at a great price. My only complaint is their limited colors. They don’t come in red. Oh, well.

Eqp Review -- Aqualung Titan LX

About 30 minutes into a dive at Pierce Island last week, I spotted two big nudibranchs feeding on a single hydroid, their bodies curving together in a near-perfect oval. What a series of photos this was going to make. I moved in to shoot them but only got off a single shot before hearing a mini-explosion about ten feet away.

Ah, yes, the old regulator freeze-up. I followed my buddy, who was now furiously bubbling away, up to the surface. At 38 degrees, the water didn’t seem quite cold enough to cause such a freeze-up, and yet, there we were, swimming back to the beach on the surface. So much for that nudibranch series. It was the third time this winter that a buddy’s regulator has frozen – twice underwater and once after we’d surfaced.

Let’s face it, some regs just can’t handle a little temperature.  My first regulator, a Dacor Pacer 900, could take anything … depth, cold, exertion, you name it. But when Dacor evaporated, so did their parts, and I switched to a Poseidon Odin – supposedly a high-performance, cold-water reg. What a joke. Forget cold water – this regulator had so many design flaws as to be a poor choice in any conditions. Next came a Sherwood Blizzard, a regulator supposedly made specifically for cold water. It froze on a semi-regular basis.

Later on, I met a gentleman who was a scientific diver in the Antarctic and who kept meticulous records on the regulator freezes his team had suffered over hundreds of dives. He also considered the Blizzard to be unreliable, but said that the Magnum, another Sherwood reg, performed better than any other they used. And he was right – that reg never froze on me.

Time moves on, though, and over the last four years, I’ve been using an AquaLung Titan LX. And it may be the best cold-water reg I’ve ever used. Even in 29-degree water, and with air temps in the teens, it performs perfectly every time. It’s so consistent that no matter how cold it is, I never even bother to wonder whether it’s going to have problems or not. I can’t speak to how well it breathes on deep dives – the deepest I’ve taken it is 107 feet – but if you’re in the market for a cold-water reg, I highly recommend it. 

While we’re on the subject of dive equipment, dive buddies and their combination with cold water, I’ve also made two dives this winter where I’ve had to wrestle my buddies out of their fins at the end of the dive. Their fingers were too numb to push those little plastic release buckles. Why, oh why, oh why, in this day and age of spring straps – one of the cleanest, simplest, and best innovations in years – would anyone still have plastic buckles on their fins? Spring straps, unlike their plastic counterparts, won’t break at the worst possible moment, and will make donning/doffing your fins incredibly easy, even with numbed fingers. Who knows how many divers could have been spared the humiliation of crawling about in the shallows with their gear on, waiting for some good Samaritan (i.e., their buddy) to come over and unbuckle their fins, if only they’d made this one little change.

And the photo below? It’s the one shot I got off of those nudibranchs at Pierce Island before having to surface. It really would have made a great series.

 

 

Eqp Review -- DUI Crushed Neoprene Gloves with kevlar

When it comes to cold water diving, gloves are definitely one of the weak points in a drysuit. It's just so hard to keep your hands warm.

Ok, time for the full-disclosure disclaimer: I’m not a fan of DUI.  I think the quality of their products has declined over the years, while their prices have climbed and their customer service sunk to new lows.  Not a good combination.

Nevertheless, I want my hands to be as warm as possible in cold water, and so I tried these gloves with high hopes.  To test them, I wore them on four separate dives, all in 36-/37-degree water, and all with dive times in the 60-minute range. On several of the dives, I wore a crushed neoprene glove on one hand, and a heavy duty (blue) DUI dry glove on the other to better compare.

The results were not great – mixed at best. On all of the dives that I wore the two different gloves, the the crushed neoprene glove was warmer for the first 30 minutes or so.  Over the last 30 minutes of the dives, however, the difference between them was negligible.  Both hands were pretty cold.

As for durability, there's no doubt that the crushed neoprene is a tough glove.  At the same time, though, it takes away an awful lot of dexterity and tactile sense. Initially, part of the problem was sizing. The first pair that I tried were size large -- I always wear large gloves. When they arrived and I tried them on, they seemed to fit. It was only at the dive site that I noticed a problem. Normally simple tasks, such as putting on my wrist computer and compass, or attaching my drysuit inflator hose, were no longer simple. And the problems continued underwater.

It turned out that the glove fingers were all about a half-inch longer than my fingers. Because of this, and the stiffness of the material, I had a hard time grabbing anything. DUI has apparently made the fingers of the large-size glove intentionally longer than usual after getting feedback from test divers. That wasn’t the case with me. After a couple of dives, I switched to a pair of mediums. I found those to be a little tight and my dexterity and tactile sense was still terrible.

Would I recommend these gloves for cold-water diving?  Nope.  You just lose too much sense of feeling without the benefit of being significantly warmer.  There are better options out there.

These gloves sell for approximately $200.