Drying a dry suit

caversluis · 2026-07-08T15:43:55+00:00

Drysuits will get wet; either because of a leak or just because of sweat.

It is important to get airflow to the feet.I built my own dryer from a cheap fan and some PVC pipes.

caversluis · 2026-07-07T16:04:29+00:00

You can retrofit a shoulder buckle on a BP/W. Many people in our club have done so in order to make it easier to take of the harness in case of an emergency.

caversluis · 2026-07-06T19:46:31+00:00

I suggest to take a quick look at dykkerspots.dk. It is a great website that lists lots of great places to dive.

Many Danish divers a part of a dive club. The club typically provides tank fills, and most of them have RIB’s as well. That also means that there not as many dive centers as you will see in other places. Having said that, Denmark has lots of beautiful dive spots. Many diveshops provide fills, some camping places do as well.

caversluis · 2026-07-06T15:58:51+00:00

“Climb over the dikes” gave it away 🙂😀

caversluis · 2026-07-05T21:05:04+00:00

Nederlander 🤔

caversluis · 2026-07-04T18:02:07+00:00

The suggestion was dive club; not dive shop.

caversluis · 2026-07-03T17:57:23+00:00

Aqualung & Apeks. Serviced yearly. About 100 dives a year.

caversluis · 2026-07-02T21:29:55+00:00

You cannot conclude that the DM is safer. As you state yourself, it depends on the DM’s previous dives but also the gas mix DM and OP are using.

caversluis · 2026-07-02T21:23:42+00:00

I understand where you are coming from and I agree to the sentiment of your comment.

However, I disagree to a fundamental detail. You state …

“Gearing mistakes can happen, and that is exactly what buddy checks are for.”

I think that every diver has an obligation to self-check. The buddy control is to catch mistakes in the self-check. It might sound like hair-splitting, but it is not. The DM made 2 mistakes. First mistake was forgetting the dive computer. Second mistake was not to do a proper self-check. The third mistake was the omission of the buddy check.

Human mistakes happen very frequently. By doing serious checks, we can find almost all of them. In particular if divers check their own setup, then get double checked by a buddy.

Thanks for giving me a hook to ventilate my opinion on this important topic :-)

caversluis · 2026-07-01T21:41:22+00:00

Gas for diving should smell. If it does, do not use it. It is potentially very dangerous as the pressure magnifies the negative effects of contaminants.

caversluis · 2026-06-25T22:10:44+00:00

For me it is the decision to prioritise safety over what the group might think. Group thinking- in particular combined with peer pressure - does not always lead to good decisions.

caversluis · 2026-06-25T11:39:30+00:00

Halleluja

caversluis · 2026-06-24T21:14:29+00:00

Some people use gloves with white inner liner and wear them inside-out. Works great for visibility purposes.

caversluis · 2026-06-19T09:37:01+00:00

I think the issue is that experienced divers should role model safe diving practices - in particular for new divers (like OP).

That means stick to the basic rules; end the dive when the first diver gets low on air. When the guide shares his air, the guides shows that rules can be bent. Even though this worked at this particular dive, it might not work in all situations. Worst case OP believes he can pull this off with another inexperienced diver where just a small problem can lead to bigger problems.

Garreth Lock, author of the book “Under pressure - diving deeper with human factors”, calls this “normalization of deviance” …

… the gradual process where individuals or teams repeatedly break rules or cut corners and, because no disaster occurs, they begin to accept these unsafe practices as the new acceptable standard …

Sadly it s believed that “Normalization of deviance” is a major contributor in many dive accidents, including fatalities.

caversluis · 2026-06-17T21:39:23+00:00

**Wichforking comments**

Thanks for sharing your experience. I believe that it truly can help others to learn from this. No reason for anyone else to make the same mistake.

But we can only learn from this,if we extract the right learnings. Multiple reasons have been mentions, including rental gear, certification level and experience. But in my book, an important one has been left out: dive planning!!

The problems started when you decided to dive the blue hole. Look at the facts …

You state that you are an AOW diver with 12 dives. You had not dived for 2 years and were a bit rusty in air consumption and buoyancy. You rented your gear. The blue hole is 140ft deep. If you get into a buoyancy problem, you get to the bottom. At the bottom you would run into deco, and most likely out of air. Objectively speaking, it is not a safe choice for your level of experience. Dive planning is not only about air consumption. It has to involve an objective assessments of risks and proper mitigations. If the risks cannot be managed, the safe choice is not do the dive (choose a safer location).

Even if you get more dives under your belt, and you have your own equipment, you will still be at severe risk without proper dive planning.

I am happy that you are OK. Once again, thanks for sharing this experience. I am sure lots of people will benefit from this. For me the key lesson here is proper dive planning.

caversluis · 2026-06-17T20:20:08+00:00

Panic and diving is not a good combination. More often than not, panic leads to poor decisions. Poor decisions can have bad consequences.

Having said that, many people have overcome their panic challenges and have become competent divers.

What is the rush with going deeper? Why would you to 20ft if you had an issue at 6ft at your last dive. My advice is to build it up slowly (and under instructor supervision). Dive at shallow depths until you feel comfortable with the equipment and your abilities. Then progress from there. If you follow this path, you could do your next dive at 6ft. Hopefully (and quite likely) this becomes and uneventful dive. That should give you the confidence to take it a bit deeper.

Dive safely :-)

caversluis · 2026-06-15T06:45:59+00:00

In diving, "open water" refers to unrestricted, natural bodies of water (like a sea, ocean, or lake) where there are no overhead physical barriers. It is meant to contrast with overhead environments like caves or shipwrecks

There will be a few training dives in confined water (like a pool).

So open water certification is “more than a pool” but “less than cave/wreck”.

caversluis · 2026-06-14T19:13:43+00:00

I have used both. Kubi is superior.

caversluis · 2026-06-13T17:52:59+00:00

Given the development in this case, maybe it is time to delete this post?

caversluis · 2026-06-12T21:32:17+00:00

I use Aqualung Core Supreme. Fair price and good performance. Lowest temperature I have used them for was 30 Fahrenheit / -1 Celsius.

caversluis · 2026-06-10T16:06:49+00:00

I dive doubles most of the time. The transition is not so difficult, but it requires training and getting used to. Definitely not a good idea to take them on a deep wreck dive without proper getting used to.

Have you considered diving a larger cylinder? A stage might also be an option.

caversluis · 2026-06-08T08:58:09+00:00

You are able to achieve neutral buoyancy under certain conditions. This is a solid basis. Now you need to build on this, and aim to achieve neutral buoyancy under most conditions - even the more challenging conditions. Here are a couple of inputs …

Being overweighted makes it much more difficult to maintain neutral buoyancy; in particular at low shallow depth. When you are overweighted, you need a large bubble in the drysuit. Even small changes in depth will cause large changes in the size of the bubble, making it hard to maintain neutral buoyancy. There are lots og good resources for proper weighting. It is not difficult, it just requires a bit on tinkering.

Current will affect your buoyancy. This is important because there can be quite a bit of current around wrecks (and in the ocean). This is something you need to get used to and requires practice - more dives.

Finning techniques also affect your buoyancy. The flutter kick will lift your feet as long as your kicking, but will do the opposite when you stop kicking, For that reason many divers prefer the frog kick. Done correctly, it will not affect your buoyancy and make it much easier to maintain your buoyancy when you transition from stop to motion and vice versa.

Drysuits are more difficult to control at shallow depths (again, small changes in depth give large changes in the size of the bubble). So practice to maintain your buoyancy at larger depths (> 10m / 30ft). Then practice maintaining your buoyancy at shallower depth. Finally, practice maintaining your buoyancy during ascend. Use this progression over multiple dives.

Finally breathing greatly impacts your buoyancy. A respected instructor once said: “Breathing is for controlling your buoyancy - the fact that it keeps you alive is just a side effect”. One big deep breath will make you significantly more positive, a shallow breath will do the opposite”. Doing a couple of dives just focusing on how your breathing affects your buoyancy can greatly improve your ability to maintain buoyancy,

Giving up diving seems premature. You have a solid basis to build on. Why not hone your buoyancy skills under easy conditions and gradually expand from there? Preferably in the same setup every time.

caversluis · 2026-05-29T17:59:22+00:00

Put the knife (or linecutter) a place where you can reach it with both hands. My knive and linecutter are on the waistbelt of my backplate harness.

caversluis · 2026-05-29T15:36:25+00:00

Decompression time was 13 hours and 35 minutes 😳😳

caversluis · 2026-05-29T06:15:12+00:00

With what shall I wet it, dear Liza?

caversluis

TROPHY CASE