- Messages
- 20,561
- Reaction score
- 14,946
- # of dives
- I'm a Fish!
I was on my way to cave country to dive with @The Chairman and with the plan of relatively short dives on a CCR, I brought my 3mm and hooded vest.
I randomly decided that I was going to harass @cerich and say hi since I haven't seen him for a while, and it ended up with me buying a new wetsuit. It was long overdue anyway since my current 3mm is probably 1.5mm by now, and I figured I'd give it a shot.
By the end of tomorrow, I'll have put close to 20 hours on the suit since I picked it up on Thursday and all I can say is WOW. It dives like a 5mm from a thermal perspective, the springs are a degree or two cold right now due to the river intrusion, and I haven't been cold at all just diving with my beat up 5mm hood and this suit.
Fit is fantastic, neoprene is super soft and stretchy, zipper cord is long enough!, the interior felted lining is fantastic for preventing the suit from sticking to you and just feels good.
Pockets are not something I normally dive with having been doing most of my technical diving in sidemount. My drysuits and wetsuits are pocketless, and I normally slide on a single pocket to my harness when diving backmount. These pockets are really well thought out with a zipper up top, and velcro large closures. Dual short bungees allow some semblance of organization in the pockets. Only slight issue is because the neoprene is so soft and stretchy, it feels weird when donning the suit with full pockets as they sag from the weight. I did have backup lights in there as well as the normal stuff, so that added some weight, and I'm sure the 7mm does better, but it's definitely something that if you are diving this day after day with it hung up at night, I'd recommend emptying the pockets for longevity of the neoprene. Probably a nonissue, but better safe than sorry with an expensive wetsuit.
Suffice to say, I'll be swinging back to grab the 7mm either on my way home, or on the next trip. For anyone looking for a high quality wetsuit, it's a phenomenal product. I'll be traversing grandly on OC sidemount tomorrow, so will see how the pocket placement works for me. If it's ok, then my O'Three may well get relegated to squeezy sidemount stuff since and I'll use the Deep6 7mm for teaching and some longer dives since it is much easier to don/doff
I randomly decided that I was going to harass @cerich and say hi since I haven't seen him for a while, and it ended up with me buying a new wetsuit. It was long overdue anyway since my current 3mm is probably 1.5mm by now, and I figured I'd give it a shot.
By the end of tomorrow, I'll have put close to 20 hours on the suit since I picked it up on Thursday and all I can say is WOW. It dives like a 5mm from a thermal perspective, the springs are a degree or two cold right now due to the river intrusion, and I haven't been cold at all just diving with my beat up 5mm hood and this suit.
Fit is fantastic, neoprene is super soft and stretchy, zipper cord is long enough!, the interior felted lining is fantastic for preventing the suit from sticking to you and just feels good.
Pockets are not something I normally dive with having been doing most of my technical diving in sidemount. My drysuits and wetsuits are pocketless, and I normally slide on a single pocket to my harness when diving backmount. These pockets are really well thought out with a zipper up top, and velcro large closures. Dual short bungees allow some semblance of organization in the pockets. Only slight issue is because the neoprene is so soft and stretchy, it feels weird when donning the suit with full pockets as they sag from the weight. I did have backup lights in there as well as the normal stuff, so that added some weight, and I'm sure the 7mm does better, but it's definitely something that if you are diving this day after day with it hung up at night, I'd recommend emptying the pockets for longevity of the neoprene. Probably a nonissue, but better safe than sorry with an expensive wetsuit.
Suffice to say, I'll be swinging back to grab the 7mm either on my way home, or on the next trip. For anyone looking for a high quality wetsuit, it's a phenomenal product. I'll be traversing grandly on OC sidemount tomorrow, so will see how the pocket placement works for me. If it's ok, then my O'Three may well get relegated to squeezy sidemount stuff since and I'll use the Deep6 7mm for teaching and some longer dives since it is much easier to don/doff