O’Three – Come in from the Cold

Oh joy, oh warmth, oh comfort…….I arrived down to Scubadive West dive centre on Monday morning to be greeted by 3 boxes of wonderful O’Three products. The amazing guys over at O’Three are supplying Ciaran and I with all our drysuits, thermals, gloves, hoods and an incredible piece of technology in HUV systems (Heated undervests). Where we’re going we need some quality gear and these 3 boxes contained the best gear available on the market. The suits themselves are the Ri 2-100 flex…extremely durable, superb quality and very comfortable. They also gave us a couple of pairs each of toasty Extreme PBB thermals. They thought of everything as we had many different hood and gloves options to try out….and a battery operated heat undervest. We’ll be just feeling the chill up in Greenland and with the flick of a switch on goes the HUV and instantly a bit of extra core warming! Check out their website and see all their lovely warming goodies.

Ciaran & I extremely toasty in our new O’Three kit

We spent the last 2 days at Scubadive West trying out the new gear. As amazing as all this new gear getting used to it made me feel like I was a beginner again. New glove system, extra weights needed for all the extra thermals underneath.

Heated Undervest…..nice!

Seeing as I’m so new to this my buoyancy was thrown and I needed to figure it out quickly. Luckily with the expert guidance of Ciaran, Breffni & Cillian I am back on track again.

Zero leaks, neck and wrist seals were fantastic and I was actually too hot in all the gear. We stayed in for over an hour on one of the dives. Good news as it will be a fair bit colder up north!

Another amazing feature that O’Three had fitted are P Valves. Any guesses?!!! Tech divers and cold water divers often have a need to relieve themselves when stuck in a drysuit for some time. It is not unusual for a tech diver to go to a pharmacy and ask for adult nappies, KY Jelly (For wrist seals) and baby powder. If interested you can read more on Matt Jevons page.These are situations that I would prefer not to be in so we opted for the p-valve…a clever little valve with a tube on the inside. One has to basically apply a rubber condom with a hole on the end. This condom has glue on it so make sure a bit of trimming is done or god help you. To help with the condom sizing, there is a chart to help measure up. This is something you want to make sure you don’t exagerate or there may be trouble ahead!!! See below.

P valve apparatus

Remarkably it all works like a dream.  In fact it all works like a dream so many, many thanks to O’Three for supplying us with all of this incredible gear. Thanks to you we will hardly feel the cold in Greenland and can concentrate on capturing some quality images. Next stage…..the underwater housing!