Does anyone have experience with the “aquatherm” products made by this British Company?
Recent discussion on Bagboater
See the Bagboater thread starting with http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bagboater/message/5631
ChillCheater
I saw a ChillCheater drysuit at a recent outdoors show. It had a couple of interesting features.
Instead of the standard neoprene gaskets for neck, wrist and ankle, it had a soft “rubberized fabric” looking material. The fellow telling me about the suit (the Canadian distributor), said that they had considered going out of drysuit sales partially because of the steady stream of returns from people who had “accidentally” ripped a gasket. The ChillCheater suits should not have this problem.
The entry zipper runs across the shoulders instead of usual front diagonal or rear zippers. The theory is that the shoulder location shouldn’t cause any discomfort when sitting or bending. A Man’s “relief” zipper is optional.
Other options are neoprene booties and an spray-skirt “over-skirt” (I forget the proper name for this) to come down over the top of the sprayskirt tunnel.
The inner material is apparently treated with an anti-bactrial or anti-fungal coating to reduce the growth of undersirable “things” and their associated odors.
The material is breathable.
It is soft, especially on the inside so that going without an inner layer in warm weather becomes a more comfortable option. The material feels lighter than the RavenSpring suit (with which I am most familiar) or with other Kokatat suits I have seen at Mountain Equipment Co-op. The gentleman I was talking to says he uses tham and they hold up extremely well.
The price is excellent. As far as I could tell from our brief chat, there is no surcharge for custom fitting (the same as RavenSpring), and the suit works out to over $100 (CDN) less than a RavenSpring suit.
I was quite impressed with what I saw.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of detailed info at the ChillCheater.com website.
HTH,
–
Darryl