Took me 3 days to figure out my drysuit zipper was just dirty

Spent last Tuesday fighting a stuck zipper on my DUI drysuit at the dock in Port Angeles. Tried wax, tried silicone spray, even considered just calling it a day and going back to shore. Third morning I took a toothbrush to the zipper teeth and flushed out a wad of salt grit and sand. Zipper worked perfectly after that. I was about to drop $400 on a replacement. Anyone else spend way too long on a simple fix before thinking to clean the damn thing?

3 comments

3 Comments

jesser7923d ago

Hold up. You're blaming yourself for not cleaning it, but maybe that drysuit zipper was actually going bad and the cleaning just bought you a few more dives. I had a zipper on an old shell suit that looked fine after a scrub, worked for two more trips, then let go at 60 feet during a deco stop. That was a cold, wet, expensive lesson. A zipper that jams that bad from a little grit is already worn out, you just delayed the inevitable. Sometimes the simple fix is just a bandaid hiding a real failure waiting to happen at the worst time.

parkerp8023d ago

Yeah my buddy's drysuit zipper failed on a night dive off Catalina a few years back. We were only at 40 feet but it was like 55 degree water and he was in there for 20 minutes before we could get him out. It wasn't even grit or sand it was a tiny little piece of fishing line wedged in the teeth. He had checked the zipper topside, did the whole wax routine, thought it was fine. Then bam, that little string just worked its way in deeper at depth and locked it up solid. So yeah sometimes it's not even wear and tear, just dumb bad luck that you can't really plan for.

king.derek6d ago

That 20 minute wait in 55 degree water must've been brutal.