Summery down 20 feet freediving? Newbie asks advice.

[PerryC]

To freedive I will wear a wetsuit, and all I have is an old heavy, stiff, 7mm job from my SCUBA days. If I get a modern and appropriate freedive wetsuit (probably a 3mm cheapie to be sure I still can and want to be active in the sport), will that work for ocean kayaking? Will other stuff be more appropriate (and if so, what)?

A 3mm suit for free diving could be like a clam bake after you really start to paddle if you had it fully zipped up. If your looking at using your kayak like a dive platform, I would really take into consideration how difficult it will be to get into or out of whatever wetsuit design you may be thinking of while on your kayak. If you're looking at the full suit design, if you kept it pulled down to your waist while paddling, how easy will it be to pull it up over your head and reach around to zip it up? With a farmer john, say you just had the bottoms on, how hard would it be to don the top and get fully into it.

For general cool water stuff here in SoCal, alot of just use splash pants, and I personally alternate using splash pants and also 2mm NRS Rodeo Pants like are in the gear reviews section. I don't wear them together, but if I'm more concerned with keeping the sun off, I use the splash pants. If it's cooler, I use the rodeo pants. With either of these, we can easily layer our torsos which makes adjusting to the day pretty easy.

Between the wetsuits, you could probably wear the farmer john bottoms more while paddling if you wanted to. But the full suit would feature reduced points of entry for cold water if it used one zipper up the back. It's a tough call which would be better, but if you're still in doubt you could always rent one style and try diving with each style and see which works better for you. For the size, it's really hard to suggest anything. You could always try a different manufacturer to see if one is naturally a bit larger than the others for the same size. Hope this helps,
Perry