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03-05-2003, 09:46 AM,

We will be ice diving at Lake Wazee in Black River Falls, WI this Sunday. Wazee Sports is going to be running the dive, cutting the holes and provided food and hot beverages. The cost is $10 in addition to the park entrance fees. You must be Ice Diver certified to participate. Hope to see you out there!

03-10-2003, 09:42 AM,

It was a pretty good dive. The wind was harsh, but we had shelter. Wazee Sports had great soup, bbq sandwiches, cider and cocoa. We had two holes cut in the ice and some decent diving.

I got in the water after the fourth or fifth set so things were silted up a little, but it still wasn't bad at all.

FreediveWI · 03-10-2003, 10:44 AM,

My divebuddy and I went out freediving in Lake Monona for three hours on Saturday. We ended up with 4 inches of snow falling on us while we were in, but had a good time spearing.

Jon

03-10-2003, 11:24 AM,

Freediving through the ice...wow.

What do you wear for exposure protection while you are doing that? What do you do for safety - tie ropes to you like ice diving? I'm kinda curious.

FreediveWI · 03-10-2003, 11:45 AM,

If I could gifure out how to post pictures on this forum I would show you. ???

We wear freediving wetsuits. These are quite different from scuba wetsuits. They are much better for coldwater diving as they are:

1 warmer
2 thinner for same warmth
3 use less weight
4 more flexible

They have a biotermic coating on the inside to stick to your body- Henderson finally caught onto this a few years ago and gave it some goofy name like Gold Core. Freediving suits have had this for a long time.
They also have wrist, face, ankle, and waist seals - they are almost totally dry on the inside. We wear icecaps under our hoods along with 3 finger mitts and socks that seal as well.

For freediving under the ice I wear a standard ice harness and keep it clipped off to a weighted rope that runs straight up and down in the hole. I can swim freely up and down along this line.

Lake Monona has a warm water power outlet on it that thaws the ice back a couple hundred yards. The water is 57 in the pipe and 37 away from it. We spent 3 hours moving back and forth inbetweem the warm/murky water and the clear/freezing water.

Jon

03-10-2003, 08:32 PM,

Interesting stuff...thanks for explaining.

From the sound of it, those freediving wetsuits beat the heck out of scuba wetsuits. I wonder why people even bother using the scuba wetsuits...is there some big reason why the freediving ones couldn't be used for scuba?

And yeah, Henderson did come out with the Gold Core thing. Scubapro has a similar feature called Silverskin. I have one of their 7mm Silverskin suits. That stuff really, really clings to the skin. It's kind of hard to pull the suit on actually. I actually started smearing some hair conditioner on my legs to ease the process of getting into the suit.

FreediveWI · (This post was last modified: 03-11-2003, 10:23 AM by FreediveWI.)

They are harder to get into because they have no zippers. The older freediving suits were bare rubber on the inside.
I use a spray bottle with a 50% non-scented hair conditioner mixed with water. I spray down the inside of the suit and then slip into it.

Most, almost all, of the good freediving suits are European. Most Americans have never heard of them. Some of the better ones are:
PICASSO SUB
ELIOS SUB
OMER SUB
METAL SUB
ESCLAPEZ
CRESSI SUB
I think that the only one most have heard of is Cressi, but they don't normaly import their freediving suits to this part of the country.

A few years after the freediving suits came out with Biotermic Henderson added it to their line and now almost all wetsuit makers have some form of it under their own brand name.

You can use them for scuba diving- I have.

Jon

03-12-2003, 12:27 PM,

Interesting stuff. Thanks again.

I could see how not having zippers could make it a little difficult. Man, I hated getting into my wetsuit and that had a full zipper down the back. I like getting into a drysuit a lot more. Smile

I did a few searches out on the net for "Freediving Suits" and saw some of the brands that you mentioned. That's about the first time I had ever heard of them..heh.

FreediveWI · 03-12-2003, 06:38 PM,

The photo attachment feature is now working and I can show you how I rig a harness for freediving under the ice.
Jon

FreediveWI · 03-12-2003, 06:40 PM,

This is how it looks while swimming.

Jon