I received a Gill drysuit in the mail from a repeat customer. Customer His handwritten message stated something like “Charlie, find out what happened with my suit, it nearly drowned me and I ended up in the Emergency Department with moderate Hypothermia!” To say I was intrigued, is an understatement. I love finding out what is wrong with a drysuit and making sure people’s drysuits are safe to be in. I did my free visual inspection and didn’t have to look too hard to find the leak source. I placed my foot next to it for scale…..
Here is another view, with the suit turned inside out, again, with my lovely foot for scale, to illustrate just how small the hole was…
Let’s face it folks…this is one tiny hole…so what I want to illustrate here is for the good of all drysuit wearing people everywhere. Due to this small break in the fabric, the wearer shared this story with me via email….
“That hole prevented me from bring the sailboat to the upright position. We went over and I moved around the stern to the centerboard and positioned myself for recovery. I knew there was a problem (49 degree water running down one leg is a clue here). My clock was ticking. The weight of the water prevented me from reaching the gunnel on my first attempt at recovery and the boat skudded away from me. I could not catch up with it at that point.
My young crew was fine. His suit did the job it was designed to perform. I sent him to shore (less than fifty yards). I followed slowly.
The pfd saved my life! The suit was pulling me down. With every stroke, I ingested cold sea water. The police boat reached me at minute 21. I was so close to the beach, I could have saved myself (that is always my plan). It took three crew to haul my sorry butt into the boat looking like the michelin man.
I suffered moderate hypothermia (96 degrees). They thawed me out in the ER. Nobody died and nobody went to prison!
This happened in late April in 20 mph winds and an air temperature of 55 degrees.”
This story just really reminds me to remind everyone again…that drysuits literally are life saving suits. To avoid what this customer went through, I would recommend the following:
- Inspect your drysuit for holes before and after each outing. You never know what may make a hole in a drysuit, or when it may happen…INSPECT. Divide your suit up into panels. Every suit is divided already by stitch lines. Just give it a good once over, methodically panel by panel. Should take you no more than 5 minutes.
- Look at your gaskets and inspect them as well. You can follow my video for how to do so.
Obviously, the man was a sailor. A lot of my customers are frostbiters and college/high school sailors and coaches. Water temp of 55 degrees and 20 mph winds does sound like a tough combination. But imagine if this guy had been in whitewater, in a keeper hole, with an opening in his suit like that. It wouldn’t have mattered how good the PFD was…his head would have gone underwater in no time and stayed under permanently. While working on the rivers and paddling I have seen people go under for up to 20 full seconds (unplanned-squirt boaters not included) in keepers and that was with no water filling up their suit.
I leak test suits for $20 a pop. Pretty inexpensive way to know if your suit is leaking. Also, when I leak test suits, I put water in them…they become so heavy that I cannot lift them and can barely move them…try swimming to an eddy with that kind of weight. So…please be safe out there. Also, if you know of anyone that has had a close call due to similar circumstances I would love to hear about, blog about it, for the betterment and education of all of us who depend upon drysuits for comfort and safety while we are doing what we love, in the water.
