Vent: That near-miss in the Gulf taught me to never trust a drysuit zipper again

I was doing a pipeline inspection off the coast of Louisiana about 6 months ago, water temp was around 55 degrees. My zipper gave out at 40 feet down, and I had to abort the dive with just my backup air. The tender got me up safe, but it cost me $800 to get the suit fixed and lost a full day of pay. Has anyone else had a zipper fail on them mid-job, or is it just my bad luck?

2 comments

2 Comments

tyler_hall923h ago

Zipper failures are pretty much a given in this line of work. Had a suit pop on me at 60 feet a few years back and learned to treat every zipper like it's got a time bomb on it. Sounds like you got lucky with the backup air and a good tender.

andrew64616h agoMost Upvoted

Pre-treat zippers with beeswax before every single decent.