Chill Out, Relax and Dive In!

Following on from my previous blogs about looking after equipment and basic tools and a save a dive kit, this time I’d like to chat cold water diving specifically here in the UK. It’s a fact in the UK that at the start of the season the open water can be bit chilly and take many months to get close to double figures.

You can of course dive in a wetsuit but why not make it warmer for yourself and get trained in a drysuit. It will help keep you warmer, dryer and could extend your dive time and make it more fun than it already is, especially with DiveMania! More information about our Drysuit course can be found here.

A dry suit seals you off from the water and keeps you comfortable, even in surprisingly cold water. Becoming a dry suit diver allows you to expand your boundaries and dive more places, more often. Learn which dry suit is right for you, how to take care of your dry suit, and practice:

• Putting on and taking off your dry suit with minimal assistance

• Mastering buoyancy control using your dry suit

• Dive safety procedures when using a dry suit

Contact us today to find out how to get started!

Other considerations are ensuring your regulators are cold water rated. This means they should be able to used in water with temperatures less than 10 degrees centigrade. They should be EN250 rated and marked as <10c on the first or 2nd stage. If in doubt ask the DiveMania crew for guidance or refer to the manufacturer literature.

You can also make things safer whilst diving in colder temperatures by not purging the second stage or octopus unnecessarily under water or using it to inflate a DSMB in case it freezes open. You can also prevent free-flows by breathing gently during your dive and not diving deeper than you need to. The deeper you go the colder it becomes.

If you do dive in a drysuit make sure you’ve enough thermal protection to keep you warm, which depending on your dry suit material will vary. Also think about once you’re out of the water to keep regs out of the cold and more importantly, make sure you keep warm and hydrated. Keeping your core temperature and wear a hat to keep that heat escaping from your head!

Another thing to think about is can you say you would know what to do in a medical emergency? Give consideration to the Emergency First Response course which all make you a safer diver and great buddy! I'll be a Emergency First Response Instructor soon and I would love to teach you this valuable course.

We run it in conjunction with our Rescue Diver course but its a valuable course for non-divers too. Get in touch with DiveMania to find out more. They can even teach you to become an Emergency First Response Instructor too if you want to go one step further.

Don't forget to review your open-water training and think about you would do in the event of a free flow? If you’ve not dived for a while you should think about a refreshing your skills with a PADI ReActivate to go over the basics.

As ever we are always happy to advise and help out to keep you diving. Dive safe and I look forward to seeing you soon.

Steve