Diving a dry suit wet.

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I don't think his solution is a great one for recreational diving but to each their own. I'm not a commercial diver so perhaps there is some merit to his idea.

Like others on here, I primarily dive with a drysuit year round. I don't really get "wet" except for user error or a suit issue/malfunction. It is true you will get some condensation inside the suit but most of this is from water temperature differences and your sweat and perspiration.

If you have a properly fitting drysuit (e.g., well fitting wrist and neck seals) then you should not be wet at all. The big exceptions I've seen are people with well defined wrist tendons or very skinny necks who tend to get trickles of water since this tends to create channels which water can pass through. This can be solved with silicone seals as they tend to adhere and stretch more than latex seals.

I have also occasionally seen people with neoprene seals on their wrist and neck this it's "normal" to be wet. That's not really the case with latex and silicone seals.
 
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I may have misspoke about the connection. He just doesn't dump air into the suit and uses his BCD for bouyancy adjustments. Yesterday he dove at Fox Island with the setup we're discussing and was comfortable and spent most of his time at 50 feet or so with a max depth of 70 feet. It's not his first rodeo. He dove this way for work in Alaska and does it now for recreation. He gave up commercial work for reasons of his own.

I'll experiment with both ways and see which works the best and report back with what I find out.

I don't know exactly your friend's setup, but for a conventional drysuit, not a hot water suit, I really really doubt you can make it to 50ft without adding any air into the suit. Making it to 20ft is already a painful experience. If you were to try this, don't even go to open water. Fine pool with 10ft deep end and give it a try first. Doing it in open water can be dangerous. Once you are shrink wrap tight, you may not even be able to operate your BCD, so you will just be sinking and not be able to move. Not cool.
 
This is probably the weirdest (IMO) idea I've encountered at SB so far. The great thing about drysuits isn't necessarily that you stay dry during the dive, but that you're dry after the dive. De-kitting and spending a surface interval after a DS dive in cold water and on a cold, windy surface is totally different from de-kitting and spending a surface interval after a wet dive in cold water.

About 90% of my dives so far have been in a DS. The difference from a WS is not just clearly noticeable, it's dramatic. Fundamental. If your DS is "really semi dry to damp", ur doin' it wrong.
 
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I shudder at the thought of climbing out of the water, or up a ladder, with the legs of my dry suit full of water . . . I've done it before, and it isn't fun.

Honestly, if you are doing recreational diving (and not having to work with tools, or dig), most dry suit dives are DRY. I use dry gloves, so I don't even get the seepage into the wrist seals that you get if you use your hands a lot and have prominent tendons. I am currently diving a Santi dry suit which I have had for over two years, and I haven't had a single leak in the suit. I dove a Fusion before that, and in four years, I had two tiny leaks, and one enormous tear in the suit that I caused by falling off a dive boat in Florida.

You are in Redmond . . . if you are anywhere between 5' and 6' tall, and under 200 pounds, we have a dry suit you could try on and play around in our pool. Just PM me.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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