Care and Feeding of Your Cold Weather Gear

Leaves have begun to turn, there have been a few cooler days, the parking lot at Anglers is mostly empty, and MD Chute is at 3.5. Oh, no there is a tear in my dry top gasket! How did that happen? I haven’t used it all season. Or, I get lightheaded when I wear my dry top. These two scenarios can be prevented with a little maintenance and know how.

Drywear Storage and Care

• Store indoors in a cool dry place
• Use 303 spray to protect and preserve your gaskets
• Remove rings and watches making sure they don’t tear your gaskets
• Preemptively replace your gaskets when you start to see small nicks and tears
• Hang to dry with a coat hanger and limit or eliminate drying in the sun
• If you have space, have a drying room with a fan or dehumidifier
• Reapply 303 spray often
• Do not use heat on gaskets
• Every season or so reapply a DWR to your garment, there are wash in and spray on treatments available, use hairdryer to activate, or use dryer if you are needing new gaskets anyway
• Replace your own gaskets or send things to IR or Amigos Drysuit Repair.
• When removing garment, do not pull the gaskets off, roll them off.
• Treat the Zippers on your Drysuit and store them unzipped

These tips will help to prevent damage to your gaskets and help increase their lifespan.

As for what to do with that new drytop or suit. Consider the following.

• Train your gaskets by applying 303 and then stretching them overnight with a cup for the wrists and bowl for the neck, a reinforced traffic cone works well
• After the overnight stretching and a couple of outings, if things are too tight, consider trimming gasket.

I often get questions about what to wear in the winter. This often leads to much debate, but you should try what I am saying, I am rarely wrong .

• You have heard it before, dress in layers and no cotton. Shoot for 3 layers, wicking, insulating, then your drysuit. This system helps push moisture away from your body and out of the garment.
• With a drysuit the fleece union suits are the way to go. They can be worn alone, but work better with a wicking polypro layer underneath. Ideally, go polypro, unionsuit, then drysuit. If you are still cold after this, consider not paddling.
• For drysuits, make sure you don’t neglect the feet, fleece socks are great.
• Other great layer combos are splash pants and a dry top. I try to stay away from the pants with latex on the calves. They trap water and decrease blood flow. A unionsuit is great here but you can do fleece pants and top and a poly bottom and top.
• Hydroskin pants are nice on the bottoms sometimes, but aren’t great when it is windy or for hiking about. Hydroskin and neoprene are not good underlayers. You want to trap warm air next to you with fleece under the drywear. Neoprene is designed to trap and warm a layer of water.
• Don’t forget the gloves, pogies and head beanie, these can make a huge difference.

Here are a couple of links to tips from other folks on the subject and a couple of brands to try out.

• Immersion Research – Gasket Replacing
• Amigos Drysuit Repair\
• NRS Gloves – Love these gloves
• Best Pogies Ever
• 303 Protectant – Use it, love it
• Revivex – Retreat your garments factory DWR
• Zipper Stuff