Home Tournaments Calendar Weather Merchandise Sponsors

Go Back   Spearboard.com - The World's Largest Spearfishing Diving Boating Social Media Forum > United States Geographical Locations > California Spearfishing

California Spearfishing Talk here about spearfishing on California's Pacific Coast, and post those reports and photos!

Reply
 
Thread Tools Rate Thread Display Modes
Old 12-21-2010, 11:43 PM   #16
White Shark
Fire up the grill!
 
White Shark's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Red Triangle
Posts: 400
Re: Open cell suits for surfing?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Behslayer View Post
It's a good question. If two Surf Style Suits were made exactly the same except that one was Lined and one was Open Cell, the Open Cell Suit would be:
-Warmer
-Lighter
-More Flexible
-Less Expensive
-Less Durable
-More difficult to take care of
-More difficult to put on..

In order to use an Open Cell Suit for Surfing, you would need to allow some water into the suit. Many top Surfing suits these days can allow you to surf almost dry inside. This will not work with Open Cell. Nor would you be able to put on the suit without some water or lube..

While surfing, an open cell suit is Slippery in the chest and this doesn't allow the wearer to 'connect' top their board. However, a suit that fit well, and perhaps had a lined Chest, would work well. I've made a few Open Cell Short John prototypes and those were real nice to surf in when we get the cooler water in our winter. I was toasty in a 2mm Short John in 7O degree Water.

My buddy wore his 5mm Yazbeck one day just to see how it felt in the lineup. He almost passed out from the warmer neoprene, and he said it was slick as hell. He was all over the board while paddling. He also said that it was horrible for overhead paddling, the dynamics of the suit were all wrong for surfing.

Now having said that, I have the same suit and have to agree. We've both been surfing together for almost 20 years, and he's a Commercial Diver, so he spends more time in a wetsuit than the average guy.

The Yazbeck is an awesome freedive suit, but it's not a good surfing suit. The best out there in my opinion is the Rip Curl E-Bomb, with the Xcel Infiniti following a close second. I've owned a lot of suits in the past like most guys, and currently have 6 or 7 in rotation right now, and those are the suits I like the most.


..
__________________
Crist Spears...The best custom spears known to man.

I don't practice "catch and release", I practice "catch and grease"...

Bene legere saecla vincere.

White Shark is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-22-2010, 04:31 AM   #17
Behslayer
Registered User
 
Behslayer's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Big Island
Posts: 5,098
Re: Open cell suits for surfing?

Having grown up surfing in snow with Water Temps in the Hi 3O's and Air temps well below zero, wearing Wool sweaters under Cardboardesque, leaky wetsuits, covered in Wetsuit Rashes that almost required stitches and have left permanent scars, I'm certainly not complaining about the Quality, Comfort, Flexibility, and Warmth of modern state of the art Surfing Wetsuits.
There is something to be said about the warmth of Open Cell. In California, you are dealing with 5O degree water and air.. but in some places it's so damn cold. When it comes to good Winter surfing in the North North East it is not possible to overheat.
Behslayer is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks

Thread Tools
Display Modes Rate This Thread
Rate This Thread:

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 12:34 PM.


The World's Largest Spearfishing Diving Social Media Forum Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2002 - 2014 Spearboard.com