Good deal, your persistence paid off. Great investment.
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Thanks! I’m glad I didn’t give up. Was almost ready to quit, but this one seems like a winner. I almost got the less expensive Hydrus version, which is supposedly a pretty good material, but figured I’d just bite the bullet and get the Goretex. May take it out for a test paddle this evening!
Always wear a PFD with a drysuit to eliminate the risk of inversion drowning. It’s always a good idea to test your drysuit by wading into the water with it to check for leaks and insure that you have adequate insulating layers on. A drysuit by itself has all of the insulating properties of a shower curtain.
Sometime in the future you might be happy with Kokatat’s Gore-Tex lifetime warranty. Keep your sales receipt in a safe place.
Congratulations!
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Thanks! I did test it out the other day, and I stayed bone dry =) I didn’t want to get my head wet, so I just waded out into the river up to a bit below my chest. It was a weird feeling! I didn’t have a ton on underneath, so I could still feel the chill, but it wasn’t bad. I need to look into some better insulating layers. What do y’all recommend.
What’s this about inversion drowning? I did see some tests online where they purposely let the drysuit fill with water, but they were fine (because when your in the water, water weights the same as water), so it’s not like you’d sink like a rock. However, I’m sure a drysuit full of water would hinder movement somewhat. I do always wear my PFD (although not in this pic because I didn’t want to get it all nastied up with river water).
I have never heard the term “inversion drowning” either, but when I saw the term I knew what it meant. It has nothing to do with water getting inside the dry suit and EVERYTHING to do with the suit keeping water out as designed.
When you are in your dry suit, upright in the water, the lower portions of the suit will be compressed tightly against your body by the pressure of the surrounding water, and the air which had been under the suit in those zones will migrate to where external pressure is less, thus disproportionately inflating the upper parts of the suit, making that end of the suit very buoyant (how much so will depend on how much air is in the suit overall at the time that you end up in the water). If you are horizontal in the water, such as when swimming, all it would take is a momentary and minor degree of tilt in the wrong direction to find yourself in a head-down position, with the legs of the suit being full of air like balloons and you having virtually no chance of getting upright under your own power again. For a kayaker, who can easily end up upside-down in the water from the start (after a capsize), the situation would be hopeless from the get-go. Wearing your PFD ensures that you will always have good flotation for the end of your body that matters most - the end that does your breathing!
With one of my previous dry suits, I wore my PFD under the suit, partly to maximize flotation (since even as the suit would compress against my upper body and around the PFD, some air would be trapped in the “corners” where the fabric wrapped over the edges of the PFD, as well as within areas between flotation panels on the PFD, thus providing a bit more flotation than the PFD does all by itself). On my current drysuit, even though there’s plenty of room inside for the PFD, it’s too difficult for me to get the suit on over the top of it, so I wear the PFD on the outside. I would never go without a PFD and rely on air trapped in the suit for flotation because of the risk of the above-described situation - getting stuck upside-down in the water. You are doing the right thing by “always” wearing your PFD.
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Scuba divers wearing diving drysuits learn how to get out of an inversion situation. There is a technique. But with an air supply they have the time for a couple of unsuccessful attempts. With a PFD, the risk of inversion is eliminated.
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On the Chesapeake, where I paddle most of the time, winter water temps get down into the low-mid 30’s, which is about as cold as liquid water is ever going to get. Some may laugh, but under my drysuit I simply wear a pair of mid- or heavy weight wool pants, a merino wool baselayer top & a heavy wool sweater. These function perfectly well as street clothes, so when I put in, I take off my jacket and put on the drysuit, and when I’m done all I need to do is take off the drysuit an put the jacket back on. I do add thermal protection on my head while on the water, but that’s a separate subject.
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Thanks for that scary explanation. I don’t drysuit but it would never have occurred to me not to wear a pfd. If the drysuit gets holed, zipper or gasket failure there goes all your flotation. Also, I thought I’ve read about burping a drysuit to minimize excess air which would reduce inversion risk but eliminating inherent flotation.
Yes, burping the drysuit is part of the normal process of putting it on. I usually sit down after pulling it up to my waist, then wrap my hands around each leg from the ankle up to the thigh, squeezing out the air towards my groin. Then I stick my head through the neck gasket and my arms through the sleeves. Before sealing the zipper I repeat the squeezing of each sleeve to flatten the fabric against the arms. Depending on how the zipper runs on the suit (I have had the diagonal chest zip on Kokatats and now have an around-the-waist zip on my clam-shell style Immersion Research suit) I press as much as I can out of the chest and back (leaning against a wall helps deflate the back) and then zip it up, but not all the way. Spray skirt goes on next, then the PFD, on which I buckle the bottom belt clip but don’t zip until I squeeze a little more air out (the pressure of the PFD helps. Then finish and lock down the zip and fasten the PFD. Another option is to wade into the water up to your waist before completely closing the zipper (and before the PFD is on) – the water pressure will force any air in the legs up to the chest and out the last few inches of zipper.
If there still seems to be some puffiness to the suit after the whole routine, I carefully insert a finger into the neck gasket and open it a bit to allow a little more air release, while submerged up to my chest. But this is risky since the gasket can be damaged (I keep my nails very short and rounded to avoid this). Only a slight nick in the edge of the latex creates a weak point that can eventually tear.
If I’m with another person also dry-suiting, we can help each other in the air evacuation process – I call it “toothpasting” since the maneuver is similar to squeezing the last bit of Colgate out through the cap of a nearly empty tube.
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I paddle with a full-body 2-piece wetsuit! I have 1.5mm and 3mm suits, and after having worn them a few times I don’t feel restricted in either one when I’m on the water. Wearing a wetsuit is a little annoying because it’s a bit like wearing tight wet plastic, but when I’m paddling and the air temp is below 50° I forget all about it. It’s only onshore when I feel squeezed and I can’t wait to get out of the wetsuit (especially while driving!), so I unzip the top in the car. Below 55° air temp I wear a fleece or a windbreaker over my wetsuit.
I’ve read to the end of this thread and I know you’ve found happiness with your super drysuit, but I wanted to answer your question for others coming along. I congratulate you for prioritizing your safety on the water!
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Interesting. I had not thought of that, but it’s good to know! The other day when I tested it, I only walked into the water until I was about chest deep. It was a weird feeling to have the submerged parts of the suit tighten up against me. There was a slight amount of air in the upper suit, and I was able to just float. It basically acted like a flotation device. I can see how getting stuck upside down might be an issue.
Cool! Glad to hear you found a good solution. I still plan to get a wetsuit, probably a shorty, but the main purpose for that will be snorkeling in Lake Erie. Once the temps start to warm up a bit this spring, I should be able to get back in. Off topic, but me and my paddling buddy started snorkeling along the Lake Erie shores this past year, and it’s been really fun. The limiting factor is water clarity. Sometimes it clears up nicely, but other times, it’s like being in split pea soup and I could only see like a foot or less.
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Burping your drysuit is normal, otherwise when sitting in your kayak or in the water the air in the top half of your suit tends to leave you looking like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man or Woman. There are several ways to burp the suit. I find that simply squatting down with my arms close to my chest will get most of the air out. When in the kayak, if there is still a bit too much air I will take a finger and release a bit more at the neck gasket. Never had a problem with harming the gasket. If you swim test the drysuit before getting in the kayak, which many recommend doing before each outing, this will also give you an opportunity for rid the suit of extra air.
It’s not a good idea to remove all of the air as this will compress your insulating layers making them less efficient when sitting in the kayak. Trapped air is a great insulator.
While trapped air in a drysuit will give you some buoyancy, it is not a substitute for a PFD, in addition to the inversion risk.
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