Two-piece 6 millimeter rubbercoated suit:
- Pants are designed for sitting position, with a zipper which reaches down to the asshole. Zipper is waterproof and opens from both ends. You can comfortably sleep in the suit, because them itchy sweaty private parts can be easily vented.
- Top piece looks like any other diving suit top, except to avoid chafing, there is ample room at shoulder and armpits. Marked difference is at elbows, they are cut for 90 degrees angle. Also there is ample room for extra warming layer, typically a sweater of some fancy fleece-like material.
But the complete suit is four-piece. Because the wind is much colder than the water, I have designed heavy-duty nylon long-john and jacket which have same dimensions and functions as those above. They also protect the wetsuit proper because the rubbercoating is less durable than nylon coated. Rubbercoating is however more flexible and necessary when using 6 millimeter material.
The burning issue in everybodys
mind seems to be "Can you shit without removing or soiling the suit?."
-- Yes you can, but you need some kind of chute to direct the waste, in case
it comes in liquid form. Narrow eskimo-style
paddle would suffice. This is something you'll never be able to do in a dry-suit.
Just imagine -30C 60kph wind blowing from the Davis Strait. You just cannot
remove any of your clothing, not for a second.
My ultimate hobo dream has been a suit, which is comfortable to wear
at all times and which protects you from any kind of environment. You
wont need a tent or a home.
William Gibson has a short story about two agents in the Gobi desert
wearing just that kind of nanotechonological suit. My suit is
becoming close to that, it even has the important built-in-shower
feature, because you can flush the insides and your body with water at will.
I was experiencing the drift-ice month on a deserted island near
Helsinki last spring and soon found out that it did not make any
sense to wear anything else ever. The sleeping bag was rated for
-10C and the wetsuit was most appropriate nightie, when the
temperature sometimes dropped far below.
You wont be getting Noko-style wetsuits from the shops soon,
because they have to be custom cut. Matter-of-fact my suit
constitutes a *dry-suit*, the water cannot get in or out. Some water
is however more comfortable than swimming in your own sweat, probably
because the skin is sensitive to PH-values.
By the immortal words of Jon Turk:
"Dry suits are great, but when they fail, they fail catastrophically.
Maybe, God forbid, you're swimming in shoal water and you rip your
dry suit on a sharp rock. Then, all of a sudden, you're weighed down
with an extra 20 to 30 pounds of water. On an expedition, it's the
catastrophic failures-not the discomforts-that I worry about."
It is not a good idea to wear a sweater of "fancy fleece-like material" under the wetsuit.
If you fish from the kayak, the elbows of the sweater are always wet and cold. This causes tendonitis.
When the sun appears and wind stops, it is suddlenly hot as hell. If you wear only wetsuit, you'll be cool just by opening all zippers. And if you fall into water, you have several seconds to close them zippers before you die. (All deathsuit wearers in Norway seem to have an UMBRELLA against this treacherous arctic sun. Insane. :-)
Hence I have added more insulation on top of the wetsuit. I made this blue jacket out of 3 mm neoprene. It is very loose, and there is lots of air underneath. It has also hood. Now I have two wetsuit hoods on top of each other, which seems to be adequate even against subzero 40 knots wind.
Sleeves are very long, they are folded. I have no more any tendonitis problems.
ADDENDUM - 2009
After 8 years mostly on Arctic Ocean, I have revised my views somewhat.