Switched from a drysuit to a hot water suit for the North Sea, never going back

Spent 5 winters shivering through 40 minute bottom times until a supervisor in Aberdeen told me to try a hot water suit, now I can stay down for 2 hours and actually feel my fingers. Anyone else make the switch and struggle with the extra umbilical weight on the first few dives?

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troy_gibson437d ago

...and that's the thing, once you get used to it, you realize most of the "hard part" of any job is just stubborn tradition. People get locked into what they know and suffer for years because that's just how it's done. I see it with my own crew all the time. Guys will fight a shitty tool or a backwards process for a decade because changing feels like admitting they were wrong. Then one new guy comes in, suggests a simple fix, and everyone's pissed they didn't think of it sooner. The umbilical weight is a bitch for sure, but that's a training problem, not a gear problem. You adapt in a week, and then you start wondering why you wasted all those winters being miserable.