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Cristina wrote:
#I also got this one mean-spirited response from a person in the UK: 
>> You're on a deep dive in cold water.  You're wearing your drysuit with 
>> normal drysuit underwear.  When you have incurred a significant
>> decompression obligation, you accidently rip your suit on a jagged piece 
>> of metal, and it floods.  You immediately abort the dive, but still must 
>> do your decompression.  On the deco line you start to become very cold,
>> and due to the cold, your off-gassing efficiency is significantly reduced. 
>
> serves you right !
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#Oh well.  I hope that this isn't the general attitude over there when someone 
#has an accident such as this.

It wasn't me who said that ... but to some extent it's true.

An almost universal concept in tech diving appears to be fail-safe/redundancy of
equipment and technique. If you really are diving in such cold water, and you 
think there is a realistic chance of a major flood if you tear the suit, then 
perhaps you should think of a wearing a close-fitting thick-neoprene drysuit 
(dampsuit). 

The simple fact is that, when full of water, a neoprene drysuit has far more 
residual insulation (and buoyancy) than an equivalent membrane one in the same 
state. It's arguably a much simpler, and potentially less hazardous, fall-back 
position than rushing to the surface 30' early to change suits :-) 

(Yes I know they're not as comfortable otherwise)

Bob Talbot

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