Sharkskin Full Suit

A FEW NOVEMBERS AGO, the latex neck-seal of my drysuit split as I was kitting up for a cheeky midweek bimble. It was a bit annoying, but my irritation was soothed when I got my money back from the inland site where I wasn’t diving.

This wouldn’t have mattered much, except that I was due to meet some friends at Hodge Close a couple of days later and was now without a suit. So I went home and exhumed my old compressed neoprene Northern Diver from the loft.

It hasn’t been truly watertight for years, but it’s my trusty stand-by for those occasions when I’m damned if I’m going to miss a dive.

This time, however, I really should have thought the thing through a little more carefully, and remembered to change the under suit as well.

Hodge didn’t start well. Pulling the thick, stiff old suit on over the top of my Thinsulate wasn’t easy, but I persevered, and even got the zip closed without snagging it.

Bending my arms to get into the BC was hard work, what with all that extra material, but I was finally able to flop into the water and, after a struggle, pull on my fins.

By comparison, the dive was easy. I always liked that suit under water. But then came the ascent, and getting air out of the suit with the under suit blocking the cuff-dump resulted in the slowest, most cautious ascent in the history of sport-diving, as I clung to the rock wall of the old quarry to prevent a runaway ascent.