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I hate to sound curmudgeonly but no other piece of dive equipment has seen so many ridiculous "innovations" over the last 20 years as has the wetsuit. Don't get me wrong -- I'm not one of those guys who thinks everything used to be better than it is today. I have no desire to return to the days of horsecollar BCs or non-contoured face masks. But most of the changes that have been made to wetsuits are just so much nonsense -- particularly as it pertains to diving here in New England.
The most ridiculous of the bunch is probably the rise of the one-piece suit. The first time a buddy of mine showed up at a site with one, he spent long minutes expounding on how versatile it was. If the water was cold he could pull on a vest. If it wasn't he could leave the vest at home. After staring at it for a few minutes, though, I asked him how he was going to dive out of his kayak. You can't paddle with a suit pulled over your arms and it would be pretty difficult to put it all the way on in the kayak after anchoring -- that's what farmer johns are for. He thought about it for a moment and then said that he'd probably have to get a two-piece suit for kayak diving. I then asked what he would do when he travelled to the islands since, until that point, he, like me, simply wore his wet suit jacket. A long silence later, he said that he'd probably have to get another suit for that, a thinner one, or perhaps a skin. So how is this suit more versatile, I asked, if you need to get all these other suits to go with it. Ten years later I'm still waiting for an answer.
The fact is that divers in New England are never, ever too warm wearing a two-piece suit so the one-piece, with its ability to strip a layer off, solves a problem that doesn't exist. I've dived in Lake Winnipesaukee when temps were 78 degrees and all I did was take off my hood and gloves and was wonderfully comfortable.
The list of other wetsuit "innovations" includes, but is hardly limited to, velcro strips that constantly attach themselves to other parts of the suit, pulling them apart little by little; hard plastic knee pads that create a weak point in the neoprene just above the knee and also force the suit to conform to the shape of the pad rather than to the shape of the diver's leg; zippered hoods, gloves with little or no gauntlet ... arghh! Do the people who design these things actually dive?
To make a long story short, the only suits I'll be reviewing are those of the two-piece, 7mm variety.
Jerry Shine