Recently I purchased a Whites Fusion Dry Suit
and I'm extremely excited about it, considering it's by far my biggest investment in my sport/hobby. Bye bye to my close calls with hypothermia.
Now I will be able to dive pretty much year round in a wide range of temperatures. I got the Tech Skin for cold water diving and the lycra skin for warm water diving. All I need now is to get some fancy undergarments so I won't freeze when I do cold water diving (early April). I'll upload some pictures of me in the suit once the dry suit arrives (aprox 10 days).
I guess my next big step is to go crazy for cold.
Sportdiver magazine has a list of the 20 places to go crazy for cold so I'll start taking some of them into consideration:
1. Channel Islands, California: kelp forests, unique marine life
2. British Columbia: soft corals, giant octopus, artificial reefs
3. New York/New Jersey: wreck diving
4. Great Lakes: freshwater, wrecks, the great outdoors
5. St. Lawrence River (Upper and Lower): wrecks, the Empress of Ireland, giant catfish, all kinds of whales from belugas to blues!
6. Nunuvut, Canada: ice diving, belugas, Inuit culture
7. Antarctic: adventure, ice-diving, stunning scenery, unique marine and wildlife, bragging rights
8. Norway: swimming with orcas during the herring run
9. Iceland: unique diving situations and challenges, mind-blowing scenery, Icelandic food and culture
10. Clear Lake, OR: incredible viz, 3000 year old petrified forest, underwater vents burbling through thick layer of ash and silt
11. Alaska: wrangling icebergs on scuba, lava tubes near Sitka
12. Scapa Flow, Scotland: WWI and WWII British blockships, remains of entire WWII scuttled German fleet, North Atlantic marine life, remote Scottish culture in the way-off-the-beaten-path Orkney Islands.
13. Vladiviscok, Russia: giant octopus, Russian war wrecks, 100+ viz in summer, can go up in mountains and ride horses into Siberian tiger reserve
14. Kangaroo Island, Australia: leafy and weedy sea dragons, blond sea lions
15. New Zealand: Rainbow Warrior (North Island), Poor Knights islands, fjordland (South Island)
16. South Africa: sardine run, great white sharks
17. Lake Baikal, Russia: deepest lake in the world, freshwater sponges, freshwater sea lions, ice cold vodka
18. Colorado River: 8-knot speed adrenaline-filled drift dives, river fish
19. Nova Scotia: wrecks, and some more wrecks
20. Puget Sound, WA: giant octos, wolf eels
It's been almost a month since I purchased my dry suit and almost a week since it arrived that I finally put the time in to trimming my seals and try it on before I start diving in April. Here I am trimming my seals, showing off how flexible the suit is by touching my fingers from the back, and doing a "cool" superman stretch pose. It's difficult and uncomfortable to do this with a full 7mm wetsuit, but it's so easy and effortless with the dry suit. The only negative part is that the neck seal pushes the skin in your neck and makes your look like you have a double-chin, but who cares!!! This suit is so cool and can't wait to try it out next month.
