September 1997
Snug as a bug
Which is the better drysuit to opt for, membrane or neoprene? John Bantin puts one of each through the rigours of a Diver test, but finds that choosing a favourite is not as easy as it may seem.
THE Otter Super Skin and Gul Titanium drysuits are as different as Yorkshire is from Cornwall, the counties where they are made. However, they represent two ways to tackle the same problem - keeping the wearer comfortable, dry and warm during a dive.
The Otter Super Skin is a membrane drysuit that must be used in conjunction with a thermal undergarment. Otter provided me with a Thinsulate-lined woolly bear and foot mitts.
The heavyweight neoprene of the 7mm GUL Titanium drysuit provided a lot of insulation, but we found it best to wear a lightweight undersuit and socks for comfort, as much as for extra heat retention.
Generally, membrane suits are thought to give a drier and more comfortable dive, whereas neoprene drysuits are considered to be more hard-wearing, if restricting.
Otter has attempted to make its membrane suit as strong as possible, and GUL has tried to make its neoprene suit as dry and as comfortable as it can be.
The Otter Super Skin is made from a large number of panels of a super-strong trilaminate material. This allows for a certain degree of tailoring and avoids some of the "dustbin liner" bagginess often associated with this type of drysuit.
It does, however, mean a lot of seams, and it is here that drysuits usually fail if they are going to. In this case I can report that the joins, all stitched, glued and taped, looked strong enough to last a very long time.
The outer layer of the trilaminate uses a modern high-tech material which is exceptionally hard-wearing, and it has been adopted by Otter with wrekkies and wreckies in mind.
The manufacturer has so far used more than two miles of this material in the production of these suits.
This Otter Skin has strong latex neck and wrist seals and exceptionally heavy-duty rubber boots that look adequate for use in a Yorkshire colliery. Two double pockets with drain holes are mounted on the front of the thighs, each with a zipped compartment.
Additional safety features include two light-reflecting patches on the forearms and a separate neoprene wet hood, which also has a light- reflecting panel.
I looked at the heavy-duty trilaminate material with a certain amount of trepidation - it did not look likely to be very comfortable. I got into the suit easily enough through the front diagonal opening and pulled the latex neck seal over my head.
Internal braces stopped the crotch from sagging between my knees and allowed me to make a tuck in the torso to take up the extra length needed for this manoeuvre.
There are two zips. The first is the dry zip, and on top of that is a flap of material and a heavy-duty plastic zip to close it up and neaten the whole look.
Both zips are strongly integrated within the main material of the suit. Although aesthetically pleasing, they could lead to a certain amount of confusion and I could envisage an overly enthusiastic diver jumping off the dive boat with only the outer (non- waterproof) zip closed!
Front diagonal zips are meant to make a drysuit self-donning, but I have yet to find a suit fitted with one that I can fully open or close alone.
I have tried to use nails or hooks screwed into appropriately high points on convenient trees, into which I catch the zip loop, but to no avail. I always seem to need help because I can never shift that part of the zip that passes over the left shoulder.
I might as well use a suit with a more conventional cross-shoulder entry and with Otter this is a no-cost option.
GUL sent me a 7mm Titanium drysuit in a size to fit my wife. It looked like a beautifully made suit with the minimum number of panels and the least stitching necessary.
The neoprene material was not only thick but also seemed extraordinarily flexible.
The boots were lightweight and covered with latex, the neck seal was well bonded to the suit, and the wrist seals were exceptionally heavyweight (even more so than the Otter) and ribbed on the inner side. Again, it seemed to be a suit designed to last, and it proved exceptionally easy to get in and out of.
There was a zipped pocket mounted on the right hip and a knife pocket on the opposite side. Flexible polyurethane kneepads provided the finishing touches.
Both the suits had a low-profile Apeks inflation valve mounted on a rubber reinforcing patch, in the centre of the chest as I had requested, with a constant-volume dump valve on the upper left shoulder.
The GUL suit had an extra panel of neoprene fixed by Velcro to the inside under the valve to prevent any chance of discomfort.
Both suits kept us warm and dry in the water, and the Otter Super Skin was tough enough to take on the most demanding conditions. The latex neck seals were both designed to ensure that the diver was not left with a vast expanse of the back of the neck devoid of insulation, which can result in that "cold water down the back of the neck" feeling.
Ironically, I suspect that the GUL 7mm neoprene drysuit is that little bit more comfortable to wear. GUL supplies either a 3mm wet hood or a 4.5mm dry hood with purge valve, as optional extras.
The Otter Super Skin as tested costs £625 complete with undersuit and foot mitts, all in a kitbag. The GUL Titanium 7mm drysuit costs £499. The GUL dry hood costs £22 and the wet hood costs £17.
Otter Watersports, 01274 307555
GUL International, 01208 72382
Watch out for bargain chic
A WATCH says something about the wearer, but if you want something a bit special and cannot justify a couple of thousand pounds for a Rolex, how about £199 for an Accurist Depthmeter Chronograph?
Designed with divers in mind, it is one of those electronic quartz watches that incorporates a pressure sensor. This gives it a depth- gauge function alongside that of a watch and seconds-timer.
I always feel a bit fraudulent fitting a chunky diving timepiece to my slim artistic wrist, and the Accurist was no exception. It made me wish I was endowed with more muscle, but then again, I would probably develop some muscle if I continued to wear it, such was the weight of this water-resistant (190m max.) chunk of stainless steel.
Naturally, it has a single-direction rotating bezel in line with all proper diving watches, for use in marking off elapsed time, and the rubber strap is long enough to go round a drysuit cuff.
It has three mode settings. The first is a timepiece with a calendar window. One of the three small inset dials indicates the 24-hour clock.
The second setting is a chronograph, the posh word for a stop-watch. The bright orange central hand ticks off seconds, and two smaller dials indicate elapsed minutes and twentieths of a second.
The third setting is diving mode, when the orange central hand indicates depth to a calibrated 50m and beyond.
Once set in this mode it stays set for 30 minutes if it is not immersed, after which it reverts to time mode.
Unlike modern diving computers, its measurement interval is only about once per second, which means the watch needs a short moment to identify each depth.
This is reflected in the pause you have to make to read it - no bad thing during an ascent, of course!
The watch does not indicate your maximum depth during the dive, but afterwards you can get the information by pressing the upper of the two mode buttons located either side of the hand-setting crown.
Despite its phosphorescent glow-in-the-dark face, I actually found the three small dials a little hard to read. I confess to using a magnifying glass to familiarise myself with the instrument.
The date window is tiny compared to that of my own watch, too. It needs its own magnifier built into the watch glass.
So what purpose can this watch have, beyond attracting unwelcome advances from other divers in public bars?
A timer and depth gauge seems a good idea as a back-up for a diving computer, but then diving computers have reduced in price so much recently that it is actually cheaper and probably more sensible to buy a second computer.
And where does that leave the Accurist? It's good for those who want to tell the time and look the part.
Accurist Watches 0171 447 3900
Wedding bands
Buddy Twinning Bands and Blocks are an ideal way of marrying two cylinders. They comprise two pairs of 5cm webbing cam-bands and two plastic blocks through which the webbing passes.
You can use them with any BC that has a cam-band threaded through its back-pack, hard or soft, provided your BC has enough slots.
If there is space for only one pair of cam-bands this does not seem to matter. Simply use the second pair to cam-band the cylinders together and make them stable, even though they are not connected to the BC.
The system is admirable for someone like me who might turn up anywhere in the world and wants to dive with twin cylinders when only singles are normally available.
Buddy Twinning Bands and Blocks are available to suit 14, 17.5 and 20cm cylinders. They cost £31.72.
AP Valves, 01326 561040
Wherever I lay my kit...
David EdwardS' mother got fed up with him leaving wet diving gear lying around the house, so his father, an engineer, decided to apply an engineering solution to what was fast becoming a family problem. He made his son a Kit Master, a sort of coat-stand for divers.
This provides a welcome solution to a common problem - many of us have bathrooms that look like car-boot sales for diving equipment every Monday morning during the summer.
Made from square-section metal tubing and coated with an epoxy powder, the Kit Master has a stable base, complete with an area to stand your cylinder and weights. The upper section is designed to let you hang up your suit and BC, which drain into a drip tray.
Attached to the main spine are a number of peg-like protuberances from which you can hang fins, hood, gloves, regulator, mask, computer and gauges. There is even a special place for a BC's 400ml auxiliary cylinder, should you use one.
Ordinary coat-hangers might not be strong enough for a heavy drysuit or a tekkie's BC, so two epoxy-coated steel hangers are included.
David's father decided that if he was going to make one he might as well make a number, and kindly let me have an early example to try. I have installed it in my garage and find it ideal for hanging up my stuff, even before I have hosed it down with fresh water. Apart from the peg for the regulator, I tend to use the others in an arbitrary way, rarely hanging the same thing in the same place twice. It works.
The Kit Master is now in full production with Apax Products (not to be confused with Apeks Marine Equipment) and is available through selected retailers at around £235. Hangers can be bought separately for £7.65 each.
Apax Products, 01827 58792
Attention Atlantis users
The Draeger Atlantis was the first and only semi-closed circuit rebreather available to leisure divers. Close to 1000 units are now in the hands of divers worldwide.
As with any product, the manufacturer has found ares for improvement that were not apparent under early test-bed conditions. One problem has been the blocking or partial blocking by salt or sediment of the orifices in the control valve that replenishes nitrox in the inhalation bag.
The orifices are selected to match the nitrox mix in use. They are exceedingly tiny holes cut through a ruby by laser, and visual inspection in the field is impossible.
Originally Draeger supplied a rather Heath-Robinson solution using a bag, and most Atlantis users tended no to bother with it.
However, if an orifice is blocked the user could be rebreathing his CO2-scrubbed air unaware that the oxygen content of each inhalation is dropping. The first symptom of the resulting hypoxia could be unconsciousness!
Draeger now suplies a flow-meter, a simple device that attaches to the Atlantis second stage instead of the breathing bag by way of a plug.
The one I tried also came with a length of hose. The flow is turned on and a little ball in the main perspex part of the flow-meter aligns with the flow-rate achieved.
The length of hose acted as a shock-absorber and discouraged the ball from bouncing about, but I understand Draeger has dispensed with this on production models.
If you have been using your semi-closed circuit rereather in sea water, its orifices could be blocked. In my opinion this flow-meter should not be regarded an optional extra. Every Draeger Atlantis user needs to check the flow-rate of the orifice chosen every time before diving. Failure to do so could b fatal.
The flow-meter is estimated to cost around £50.
Uwatec UK, 01420 561412
Appeared in DIVER - September 1997
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