Dear DUI,
During my tour at DUI in December, I promised to send a few pictures along with a few words about my TLS - so here goes.
I’ve had her since Feb 1994. yes, we are coming up for fourteen years and well over 1500 dives logged together, must actually be well over 2000 but I really stopped counting quite a while ago! In that time I’ve had a few new cuff and neck seals, no surprise, but just one new zipper two years ago!
She’s been dived around the world, UK, USA, Egypt, Barbados (OK just the one dive ;-) and has never let me down. I teach a lot being both a PADI and BSAC instructor and am often in my suit all day, and yes you can go to the toilet (restroom) without taking the suit off and still be sanitary! Comfort is the No 1 thing! So much so that when I had the zipper replaced I bought another make of suit to use as it too so long and stuck it out for a whole season as I was sure I’d ‘get used to it’. Nope, I’m back in my trusted DUI (hope she’s not jealous and the pleasure of having the comfort back is unbounded. So much so that, as you know, I’ve invested in a few updates that were not around when I originally bought her, namely ZipSeals all around and RockBoots. Many people say that tri-laminates like my TLS are not as robust as other forms of suits and maybe not but when I’m not teaching I am mostly wreck diving in the English channel and she’s stood up remarkably well to the wear and tear you would expect from such activities. In fact I’ve holed her just once in a rather nasty incident off the Irish Coast one March (very cold!) on a wreck called the Kowloon Bridge, the largest wreck by tonnage in the world. Turbulence hit us at about 20m down, knocking another diver into me and then me into the wreck causing a two inch or so gash in my TLS. Needless to say I got soaked and extremely cold .. just about hypothermic and it took four people to get me back in the RIB!. After a good repair (it must have been as it’s stood up to 7 years of diving since!) she was almost as good as new but if you look closely you can see the fix.
OK, so maybe you are asking why do I refer to my TLS as ‘her’ or ‘she’. Well she’s been with me so long ;-):-
She looks after me.
Keeps me warm when it’s cold.
Is thankfully pretty low maintenance.
Keeps going on and on and on.
Makes me look good.
And lastly
Cost a pretty penny to get hold of in the first place but is still worth every cent fourteen years later.
I guess it’s just a term of endearment ;-)
Just for fun, since I bought my TLS, I’ve:-
Visited the USA 5 times
Changed addresses 4 times.
Brought my first house.
Had 3 different German Shepherds.
Got Married
Had 2 kids.
Had 6 different cars.
Been in a fatal car accident (some say the fatality was me)
Worked for 4 different employers and run my own consultancy company.
Had 3 root canals, 2 extractions and a dental implant. (In the first thirteen years of owning my suit I’d been to the dentist all of four times :-)
Got over my dentist phobia.
Dived in warm water for the first time in 1999 (5 years after getting my DUI!)
Ice dived
Dived in 3 different oceans(Indian, North Atlantic and Pacific)
Dived in 3 different seas (North Sea,Red Sea and Irish Sea) and the English channel.
Had 5 different dive computers.
Bought 6 different complete regulator sets
Bought 1 twin 12ltr manifold set, 2 300bar 12ltrs cylinders, a 5ltr, a 7ltr cylinder, a 15ltr cylinder, a 3ltr cylinder
Bought 4 different main dive torches
Bought a Subal housing, techtonic strobe and Nikon F90x camera underwater photography kit,
Seen digital come in and got a Sony compact camera and housing L and consigned the Nikon to the attic.
Replaced my BCD with a wing system
Upgraded my first wing to a new system with back plate.
Had my first German Shepherd eat the bottom of my undersuit …. Dunno why!
Had my latest German Shepherd check my pool use BCD
Got through two 3mm shorties wet suits for pool/warm water use.
Bought a 8mm wet suit for ‘kind of’ warm water use.
Taught my wife-to-be to dive.
Taught my brother to dive (who’s now a PADI and BSAC instructor too).
Taught 2 nephews to dive.
Taught heaven knows how many other students to dive!
And lastly
Bought a different make of drysuit, consigned it to the attic and gone back to my DUI!
Best regards to all,
Mike Carden
United Kingdom
