Custom suit for tropics, smoothskin, inside lined, recommendations?

[growingupninja]

Here in California where I do 95% of my diving I wear a custom Oceaner 6mm, but I need to replace my battered 1.5mm that I use for occasional jaunts to warm water. I would use it primarily for deepish spearing (30M+) and I would like to use it for competition line diving, including CNF.

Does anyone have any recommendations? I don't want anything thicker than 2mm, and I am pretty sure I would want an inner lined suit so I don't need to lube it and I like the idea of smoothskin for hydrodynamic performance. I am probably gonna go custom, too--off the rack suits are always either too small in the chest or too big in the waist for me.

Is Elios the only company that makes that type suit, or are there others? Because of where I typically dive I have little experience with 1.5mm and 2mm warm water suits. Thanks.

 

[stillwater]

I just got exactly that from Elios, but in a 3mm. Yamamoto 45 Freedown (Dark Grey) with nylon lining. Haven't used it yet as I'm landlocked at the moment but have a trip to Bali coming up in about 3 weeks. I honestly can't stop putting this thing on it's so comfortable and I'm never buying a suit off the rack again.

If you look on their site they have a pretty comprehensive list of neoprenes available and thicknesses they come in. They were fairly quick to respond to emails considering the time difference between there and the US. Right now they have the exact same suit option I chose but in 1.5mm or you could get it in shiny green. They also have a black Smoothskin suit (nylon in) made from Heiwa med density in 1.5/2mm available. It took 3-4 weeks from date of payment to it hitting my doorstep. I'm fairly certain in the 1.5-2mm range you have to have an inner lining or they tear to easily.

 

[Hobelf]

Here is a thread about altering your own suit.

https://forums.deeperblue.com/threads/altering-your-own-suit.38830/

This could B option, since thin suits wear out quickly; are easy to modify &strech a lot.

 

[growingupninja]

Thanks, I will probably end up with an Elios. I am familiar with them and got bids on my current cold water suit but ended up going with Oceaner (very nice suit). The Elios catalogue seems to lean more towards warm water suits and wanted to sell me some kind of smoothskin variant which wasn't going to fly in our conditions. Suits we wear out here need to protect from abrasion as well as temp, but tropical diving/hunting tends to be far more gentle in that regard.

Probably won't try to modify an off the rack suit but it is something to think about. I have had to repair a lot of 5mm suits that have been shredded on rocks in the shorepound, I usually glue and blind stitch; through stitches on a thick open cell defeat the purpose of the suit.

 

[cdavis]

Couple of things to consider:

If you are going to be shooting reef fish, you will be wiggling your way up into cracks and crannies, wrestling with shot fish, not real kind to smooth skin. Still, my 1 mill rife has smooth skin arms(nylon in) and has survived a good bit of that kind of stuff. How careful are you?

Nylon out retains water when you get out. Evaporation makes such a suit cooler and much more comfortable topside in the tropical sun. If it was me, I'd get a nylon out at least for the body of the suit. If you stay with smooth skin out, the suit needs to come off very fast and very easy.

 

[growingupninja]

Thanks, Connor. I am not crazy about the thought of smoothskin on rocks but was thinking of this suit more for very deep aspetto hunting and competition (where drag matters to me), or blue water, probably not something to wear all the time in the tropics (I don't get too cold usually but like suits for deeper diving). My old Omer 5mm is compressed down to 2mm or and the exterior is more patch than suit from lobster diving out here, maybe will bring that top as something I can throw on for wiggling into holes.

It depends but I am usually pretty careful around structure because our local stuff tends to be razor rocks and urchins that will destroy even to the toughest suit in a season of hunting...