Taking care of your neoprene should always be a priority,
especially if you somehow find yourself in Iceland. Photo: Burkard
By Justin Housman posted on November 21, 2013
Taking care of your neoprene should always be a priority, especially
if you somehow find yourself in Iceland. Photo: Burkard
Wetsuits
are so cool. We get to put on a superhero costume every time we paddle out at
coldwater spots. Yes, surfing in boardshorts is undeniably better, but breaking
in a new pair of boardies is nowhere near as satisfying as pulling on some
soft, fresh rubber. At $400 a pop or more, good wetsuits are annoyingly expensive but
worth every cent. Keep that new suit new for as long as possible by sacrificing
a few minutes of your post-surf burrito time for some crucial wetsuit care.
Proper, meticulous, obsessively over-the-top maintenance will not only prolong
the useful life of your suit, it keeps it looking and feeling fresh a whole lot
longer. Here’s a must-do list:
1)
A thorough freshwater rinse. If you do nothing else, rinse your suit inside
and out each and every time you use it, even if you’re planning a second
session. Salt will destroy your suit faster than everything but direct
sunlight. Save time by dousing yourself with a big jug of warm water after you
get out of the water, but before you take your suit off, then when you get home
rinse out the inside. Take the time to do this, every single time. Seriously.
2)
Hang up your wetsuit properly. Not in the sun. Not draped over your car’s side
mirror. Not slung over your balcony. And definitely not by the neck or
shoulders; this will quickly stretch everything out. Take a plastic hanger,
slide the top or bottom of the suit through, and hang it doubled-up, inside-out
in the shower or the garage. Or somewhere in the shade if you absolutely must
hang it outside.
3)
Turn the suit inside out each day until it’s dry. So you’ve rinsed your suit
out and hung it up inside-out like a responsible adult. Great. But if you don’t
surf for a couple days, only the side of your suit facing outward will dry,
leaving the other half marinating in a rubber-destroying moisture farm. Once
the outward part of your suit is dry, flip it inside out again to dry the other
side. This is a commonly overlooked routine that will greatly lengthen the life
of your suit.
4) Use
some wetsuit shampoo occasionally. No matter how thoroughly you rinse your
suit, you’re going to miss some spots, letting salt collect in crevices where
it will happily erode the warm, flexible, but infuriatingly fragile space-age
neoprene that we spend all that money on. Fill up your wetsuit changing bucket with cool water and a
few capfuls of whatever wetsuit cleaner you like, get it nice and sudsy, drop
in your suit, then get your hands in there and knead the cleaner into the
neoprene. Pay attention to the zipper too, you’ll want to keep that nice and
clean and free of corrosion.
5)
Banish the stink. Coffee before dawn patrol is mandatory. So is the automatic
peeing that comes from downing all that caffeine. And coffee pee isn’t helping
your suit smell any better at all. You can buy products like Mirazyme,
specially made to flatten odors from bacteria and mildew in wetsuits, and add
that to your wetusit shampoo regimen. Or you can use a little bit of Listerene
instead. Works great.
6)
Slow down when taking your suit off. Diagonal chest-zip suits are a godsend
when it comes to sealing out water and improving comfort. But they are hell to
take off. Trying to quicken the process by grabbing at any piece of rubber you
can and ripping it from your body like an animal isn’t doing the neoprene any
favors. Try not to use your thumbs when you’re pulling the top of the suit off.
Don’t stand on one leg of your suit while trying to yank your foot out of the
other. Especially not while grinding the suit into oily asphalt. Take it slow,
apply pressure across a broad area when slinking out of the suit, and keep
those seams happy.
