Conclusions from the dry suit tests

Well, we are happy to report all tests were completed without incident and with some pretty surprising results. It would have been nice to have our other participant there with his crushed neoprene dry suit to compare the results, (John ) but hopefully we will get those results later. None the less, listed below are the conclusions from our testing.

1. first I was suprised to find out that my undergarment and the air they trap is 12 lbs positive.

2. We discovered that it is very difficult to totally flood the dry suit . We had to really work at getting the suit totally flooded due to the squeeze of the suit at 13 ft of depth and the pressure of the water pushing on the suit.

We discovered you would have to have a major breach of your suit to totally flood it.

3. Once we were able to get the suit flooded, we determined bouancy was not affected at all by the water inside the suit. I was easily able to swim to the surface, without putting any air into my BCD.

4. I was able to swim on the surface with no gear on with the suit totally flooded. I was also able to tread water easily with the suit flooded. also, getting out of the suit in the water was easier than getting out of it out of water.

5. we had no luck purging the water from the suit from the inverted position by adding air throough the port on the front of the suit. it appeared the pressure form the air being added to the suit was not enough to displace the water in the suit. We should have stuck our octo down the suit to see if that would work.

Having heard many different opions about what would happen if you flooded you dry suit, it was very enlightening to find these answers for ourselves first hand. we will return to try John's suit and determine the effects of our undergarments on our conclusions.