Well, during the first round of Tech 1, every day, I was getting damper and damper. No, I wasn’t feeling the pressure from within and letting it out …. it was the outside coming inside my drysuit.
So I suffered through ~90 minute dives in 8C waters with a leak from somewhere, that I would feel roughly 10 minutes into the dive on my right side … down by my zipper.
Every dive I was getting wetter and wetter, and every evening, I was putting more and more Aquaseal near where I was thinking I was getting wet. Sounds simple enough, but it wasn’t working.
One day, months later, I suddenly got wet on my left side at the same time …. hmmm
Ironically? Coincidentally enough, that’s also when I finished a tub of margarine, something that was big enough to seal off my neck seal. I just needed something to allow me to fill my suit up with gas so I could start to properly find where the leak was, aside from guessing with my LED flashlight.
I ended up buying my first snorkel, and ripped off the fancy purge valve from it, and glued it into the bottom of the container. Add some broccoli elastic bands, a tip of a rubber glove to seal off the mouthpiece and away we went.
I turned the suit inside out, sprayed very soapy water to where I thought the leak should be, and couldn’t find one.
I just happened to look at it a little closer, and found some bubbles coming out of the bungee pocket along the backside.
I flipped the suit right side out, and while filling it back up, I glanced over and saw the now gaping hole through the outside of the suit in the back!
The bottom bolt of my doubles had worn a hole though the tough skin of the drysuit, and kept on wearing it out until it made this massive hole.
A few quick questions to DUI about how to tackle this location, as it was inside the sewn channel for some bungee, and determining, that I don’t really need that channel of bungee, I cut it out and patched the hole with a good size patch of material and Aquaseal.
And low and behold, that was the only hole I had.
Now my suit is back to being a true DUI suit, not a dry until immersed suit 😛