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On 4 Dec 98 at 21:31, you wrote: > Andy's drysuits - good? bad? indifferent? > stella My wife and I have owned & used Andy's drysuits for three seasons. We use them for wreck diving here off the NJ coast, and we each have put about 100 dives on the suit. We bought the only model available from Andy at that time; it was his first drysuit offering (he also is the U.S. distributor for Typhoon, made in the U.K.). It's the one with the shoulder zipper. Generally a good quality suit for the money, but definitely not a top-of-the-line suit (no pockets or other extras). They are comfortable, and dry very fast (any trilaminate suit should). They are baggy, though, because the torso has to have extra material to get the neck seal over your head, and they do not have the designed-in telescoping feature that the DUI suits have. This makes for considerable drag, but in ocean wreck diving that's not as serious an issue as it will be in a cave. After two seasons, the boots on my suit developed leaks. These are "hard" boots, which are very comfortable. But the design of the boots on my suit has a step change in thickness in front of the ankle. This is a flex point when walking and when folding the suit for storage. In hindsight I could have predicted that the rubber would fail there. A generous amount of Aquaseal fixed them. At about the same time, Tina's suit also developed a leak in a boot. This one appears to have been a manufacturing defect, a thin spot on the side of the boot, or perhaps something sharp punctured it. In any event, it was a small hole and a little Aquaseal fixed it. The smaller boots on Tina's suit do not have the same design as mine, so there is no chance of the boot failing due to flexing. My suit has also begun to develop leaks at some of the seams, most notably on the right arm where the lower arm is attached to the suit. I have taken the precaution of coating the inside of all of the seams with Aquaseal to stave off any other leaks. Tina had new seals put on her suit this past spring. I'm still on my original set of seals, but the neck seal is failing (Aquaseal to the rescue again) and I'll have all the seals replaced this winter. We have not had any trouble with the zipper or valves. I'm now well-practiced at plugging the arm and neck seals (use balloons, they work great), pressurizing the suit and using a soap spray to locate leaks. Lest I leave you with the impression that these suits are inferior, I should point out that these are our first drysuits, and we are fairly new divers, so its possible (maybe even likely) that we have exposed these suits to more than normal abuse and wear. I have also been told by other drysuit users up here that it is not unusual for any drysuit to develop leaks after 2-3 years of moderate use in this environment. I have seen patched drysuits of all makes and models, but I have no idea how careful the owners are. It is interesting that Tina has not had any leaking seams in her suit, which was made at the same time as mine, and is taken care of in exactly the same way as mine is, since we dive together and clean our gear together. I should also point out that we have had our share of problems with Andy's service. Andy is a nice fellow (we met him at BTS - he's there every year pushing his suits), but we have *never* gotten *anything* from his company when it was promised. They even shipped our suits to the wrong place one time (the only way we knew was that we got the invoice in the mail, and it showed the wrong ship-to address). When we bought the suits, Andy promised delivery in 4-6 weeks. It took 12 weeks, and we missed being able to use them almost half a season. We're getting new suits now, and going whole-hog for the DUI CF200, which is by far the most often seen drysuit up here. We are doing this only because an extraordinary opportunity arose, one we could not pass up. If that had not happened, we'd probably continue to use the Andy's suits, or maybe gone for the DUI TLS350, which I beleive would be more suitable in cave, but we don't get down to Florida to dive cave all that much, and when we do, we dive wet. We will be keeping our Andy's suits for use as backup suits in any case. Hope that helps! Art Greenberg artg@ec*.ne*
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