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triathlon suits

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
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We have been mulling over thid idea for some time, but hadn't the finances to follow through with it. Though realy for the perpose of constant without fins, resoning behind it is keeps the core warm, while flexiblity on the arms and legs for the stroke. Due to the varying thicknesses over the suit.

If you hadn't notice david lee is using such a suit at the moment with his records.

The only issue is that they don't have intigraded hoods, so diving in cooler/cold waters would become colder sooner. Obviously one can wear a seperate hood.

Do you have one to use or thinking of it over a typical apnea suit?

Personaly Being in cold water I would go for the typical suit for the integrated hood, keeps you that bit warmer.
 
I used a triathlon suit for my 2001 CW record. It was an orca predator. For my hood I cut off the hood from a 5mm picasso suit.

The triathlon suit gushes water from the zipper and is the coldest suit I have ever used. Also, because of the nylon on the inside, you need to get the inside of the suit wet, otherwise you dive with a 'dry' feeling, along with extra wasted buoyancy from air trapped in the nylon fabric.


Eric Fattah
BC, Canada
 
I use a suit similar to some triathalons, It is basicly a farmer john with lyca short sleeves. The lycra and a good neck seal keeps the suit from ballooning water when going fast. It is definatelly a warm water suit, but I love it. Total flexibility in the shoulders for body surfing, much better than a 3/2 superstretch full suit. easy to peal off the top of the suit when the boat is hot and you are getting in and out of the water a lot. I get cold easy and use this suit to spearfish in high 70s water, pure freedive in low 80s and body surf in low 70s to high 60s. Combining it with a hooded vest drops the usable temp by almost 10 degrees. What will work for you depends a lot on how and where you dive.

Connor
 
I have been using an Ironman Triathlon "Stealth" full wetsuit since 1997. Most of the time I use a Beauchat hooded vest beneath it, this solves the problem of a zipper that allows in some water (but typically not more than most other back zip suits), and the lack of a hood.

I like it, it keeps me warm, the mostly smoothskin exterior is hydrodynamic, and the flexibility in the arms and shoulders is awesome.

Is it a "perfect suit" ? No, but it gets me closer to what I want than anything else I can get off the shelf.......

I have also been interested in the newer designs that have come out in the last year or so that are a 2pc design, since this will alleviate the zipper issue, and they are reported to be even more flexible in the arms and shoulders than older models like mine....
 
to sidetrack the thread a bit, what does anyone think about no suit at all? warmth issues aside, some people i've asked recon that although 3mm better than 5mm, 0mm ia not better than 3mm. (reasons given were that not enough bouyancy on the ascent???, and that you have to kick most of the way down). i dont buy this and plan to test it out for myself when the water gets a bit warmer.
 
No suit is always better than a suit, if you can set it up properly.

If you want more buoyancy on a no-suit dive, just wear a buoyancy belt, i.e. a belt with incompressible foam 'weights.'

On the downside, the colder you are, the more easily you get DCS and narcosis; CO2 doesn't dissolve in cool body water well, so CO2 narcosis will increase (along with risk of CO2 blackout), unless you breathe more before you go down.


Eric Fattah
BC, Canada
 
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