During the week I had hastily “repaired” my drysuit’s right wrist seal by slathering on the Aquaseal, in the process discovering, where it seeped through, that the leak wasn’t where I thought it was at all! Or rather, that the seal in general was in quite bad shape. There were lots of cuts at funny angles through the neoprene.  As I have only a dozen or so dives in this suit, I can only assume that it was actually damaged by people with long nails or sharp jewelry trying it on in the shop, and had deteriorated in use. Next time, if I don’t go custom, I’ll buy one shrink-wrapped from the Internet – and feel no guilt whatsoever about going back to that shop and trying on drysuits there first. I hope tho’ that needing to buy a new one is years in the future. My repair seemed to do the job when I tested in the bath, so I have added a tube of Aquaseal to my kit. And I got a 5mm hood too.

However all this turned out to be unnecessary as I found myself on surface support all weekend, for an OW Completion at Wraysbury, two groups of three students, my group having OWSI KT, DM GL in the water as safety diver, and myself. Keen not to repeat the lead shortage of last week, we checked out everything apart from the kitchen sink from the stores, then found ourselves assigned parking for the van as far as it is possible to get from the water at Wraysbury! The whole weekend was pretty uneventful, involving making sure all the logistics ran smoothly, which I think I have a handle on now. I would have liked to have gotten at least one dive in, but I fully understand that this is “work”, and it’s still valuable experience, and better to get it out of the way and ticked off while it’s cold, and we’re at a murky pond rather that somewhere that’s a better dive anyway! I took advantage of the situation by dropping the drysuit at Mike’s for a proper wrist seal replacement and a fly zip fitting, which Christian there assures me can be ready before my next foray into cold water, currently scheduled for the end of the month. Eventually I will want a p-valve too, I expect. Later in the pub, I got some good advice from Lead Instructor AD, on needing to actively manage my own rate of progress through the DMT programme. It was good to meet some other DMTs too.