BACK ZIP
Classic method of opening and closing a full or semi full body wetsuit. Back zip surfing wetsuits have been around for over 40 years, challenged at various times by shoulder zips (in the early ‘90s) and zipperless suits (a little later), and more successfully in the past two years by chest zip entry suits. Back zips are easier to manufacture and considered functional when matched with things like the batwing (see below) but usually result in a suit that flushes more water through the neck and zipper than the chest variety.

BATWING
Wacky name given to the neoprene barrier and neck flap underlying most back zips; goes back to the Rip Curl Dawn Patrol range of the late ‘80s.

CARE
Looking after your wetsuit is easy enough, and doing so can add seasons of extra life to the thing. It’s kind of amazing that most of us don’t take the time. But what the hell, here are some simple hints as to how to take care of the poor thing.

• Rinse regularly in clean fresh water. This is primary care. Leave a wettie to dry after immersion in salt water causes salt crystals to form inside the neoprene; over time, the crystals will rip the neoprene apart, resulting in suit breakdown, particularly toward the extremities, the ankles and wrists and so forth. You’re bound to leave it salty from time to time but if you remember to rinse it properly in a bucket of fresh water every few surfs, then hang it to drip out and dry, you’ll be doing it a big favour. Make sure you let the suit soak for several minutes and give it a few stirs and squeezes to get the fresh water fully through the neoprene. Then hang it in a shady spot, either on a broad beamed clothes hanger or half-and-half over a railing, till dry.
• Full wash every month of consistent use. Wetsuit materials build up a reservoir of body oils, waxes and dirt, and it’s worth scouring ‘em out. For this you need a bucket of warm fresh water with a small amount of dishwashing detergent mixed in. Some shops actually sell special wettie washing fluid, but the kitchen stuff is fine; shower gel will work too. The warm (not boiling) water and detergent will break down the oils and waxes over a few minutes of swirling it around. Get the wettie back out, refill the bucket with cold fresh water and fully rinse all the detergent out of the suit before hanging it up to dry.
• Store off-season in a cool dry place out of the sun. Hang it, don’t fold it up.

And a few do nots:

• Don’t leave it in the back of your car for weeks in a stinking ball of sogginess.
• Don’t use laundry detergent on it.
• Don’t use a clothes dryer on it.
• Don’t leave it hanging in the sun for more than an hour or so.

For repairing, see Repairs.

CHEST ZIP
Increasingly common, perhaps even trendy entry method for full and semi full body wetties, specially in the upper levels of a wetsuit maker’s range. The chest zip is shorter than almost any back zip and thus lets in less water; it can be further designed to almost completely restrict water entry, and thus has become de rigeur in heavy super cold water suits. It has the side-effect of freeing up a wetsuit’s natural tendency to restrict movement in the back and shoulders, making it generally an easier paddling and higher performing suit option. One downside has been that many surfers find chest zips hard to get on and off in a hurry, but design improvements in most wettie ranges are steadily overcoming the issue. O’Neill’s ZEN zip system – which uses a short back zip to overlay what’s in essence a zipperless suit body – is the chest zip’s only real challenger for title of cool zip system right now.

COLOUR
Wetsuits have gone through some crazy colour scheme trips through the years, sometimes to great marketing effect. Old school Hawaiian superstar Reno Abellira once went in major pro contests wearing wetsuit pants cut like flared jeans and coloured to match. Nobody who survived the ‘80s could forget a young Occy somersaulting to fame in a Peak wettie made up of bright yellow, pink and sky blue nylon lining. But over time, they keep coming back to black, and there’s good reason for that. Not only is it neoprene’s natural colour – it’s the most practical when you consider the main point of wearing it. “Black is never a turnoff for a buyer,” says C-Skins’s Tomas Martin, “plus it absorbs sunlight better than anything else.” As a result, most modern suits are pretty restrained in their colour schemes, but some think that may be about to change. “The trend for colour is coming back,” says Peak’s Adam “Brisso” Brissenden. “The guys who are riding for companies who aren’t mainstream wettie makers – their suits will lead the way on that.”

CUSTOM
Once upon a time, you could have wetsuits cut to measure, just like a tailored suit or a hand-cut surfboard. Those days have passed, except in Japan, which thanks to its long superiority in neoprene making, is kind of the Hawaii of wetsuits. Around 80% of all wetsuits in Japan are ordered via custom service at surf shops, where you’re measured up and the measurements are sent to the wettie maker for precision cutting. But most non-Japanese wetsuit makers either don’t think custom is necessary anymore thanks to better materials which stretch to accommodate outsize humans, or they pretty much scoff at the whole concept of Japanese rubber heroism. “I had the perception that Japanese wetsuits were second to none,” says Tomas Martin. “But it’s a huge myth. They cost $900 and they come with a tube of glue for repairs. There’s no liquid taping and no wrist seals.”

DS/DOUBLE-SIDED
Refers to neoprene sheet that is coated on both sides by a fabric layer, usually nylon but sometimes other materials. Double-sided neoprene became common in the 1970s; before that most wetties were made from single-sided neoprene, with a nylon fabric lining inside and raw flat rubber outside. It was nice and warm, but it wore out very fast when that raw rubber butted up against surfboards, rocks, etc. Double-sided neoprene ruled till the 1980s, when some wettie makers realised that it held water in its outer fabric layer and thus cooled the suit down via evaporation in cold winds. Since then many colder water suits have featured sections of single-sided rubber; these days they’re generally called “heat panels” or some such term, and are sealed on the raw-rubber side with smooth wear-resistant acrylics and meshes – a bit like a surfboard’s glass job.

FIRST, the
A number of people have claimed the mantle of First Ever Wetsuit over the years, but that honour belongs to Dr Hugh Bradner, a physicist and keen diver from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr Bradner’s efforts arose from a US military effort to solve problems with underwater missions. He was an expert in absorption and reflection of shock waves – ie insulation – and was invited to help out with the effort. In 1951, Bradner decided that a diver did not have to stay perfectly dry in order to be warm, as long as whatever he was wearing could trap warm air inside itself. He was joined by legendary oceanographer and surfer Willard Bascom, who recommended he use neoprene manufactured by Rubatex Corp. Bradner’s wetsuits were put on trial by frogmen and shown to work, but he never applied for a patent nor tried to develop a commercial method of using the suit, since back in the 1950s, this was frowned upon if you worked for the military.

Jack O’Neill, founder of O’Neill wetsuits, is generally thought to be the first to develop a wetsuit for surfing purposes, about a year after Bradner in 1952. Jack is still alive and ticking in Santa Cruz, California.

FUTURE, the
Wetties have come along in colossal leaps and bounds over the past five years, partly because of the increased availability of super flexible neoprene, partly because of intense competition between wettie makers, who all want to beat each other to market with new technologies. But does this mean wetsuits just can’t get any better? Pretty much nobody in wetsuit world thinks that; they all reckon more improvement are coming down the line, but for a range of reasons. Troy Brooks from Quik thinks the new fusion glueing methods for seams is just the beginning: “In 20 years, suits may have no seams at all – the different panels will just melt together.” Tom Sullivan of O’Neill says that as long as the goal for suits is “lighter, thinner, warmer,” then everything about wetties will be measured by that criteria: “And while there’s only so much you can do, there’s already new stuff coming in seams and neoprene that’ll keep everything moving down that path.” But perhaps the most radical thinking comes from Xcel’s Ed D’ascoli. “I compare a wetsuit to tyres on a car,” says Ed. “At some point neoprene will be replaced by materials that are intuitive to the user’s needs. I see temperature and stretch adjustments being made by fabrics that are mechanical in nature at the molecular level rather than being electronically controlled. In addition more environmentally friendly materials and processes will be developed, however only if it enhances the performance of the end product. Eco will only survive if it works for the end use. These improvements will come from within our industry and driven by the imagination of wetsuit designers that have intimate knowledge of wetsuit production and materials.”

KNEE PAD
A thick slab of flexible plastic mounted on the knee contact area of a long-legged wetsuit to prevent wear-and-tear thanks to duckdiving, etc. Unbelievably, once upon a time there were no kneepads and it was common for the knee area to wear thin and break through on a full suit over time. Once a major source of wettie heartache, the knee pad has now been mastered by almost all wetsuit makers and no longer proves an issue in most cases.

NEOPRENE
This is the core of the modern wetsuit. It’s a synthetic plastic rubber compound, invented by chemists over 80 years ago, which is “blown” into closed cell foam using nitrogen. Neoprene’s chemical name is polychloroprene, the “neo” bit is a trade name coined by its corporate inventor, the chemical company DuPont. Neoprene’s a more or less inert substance, though it can be broken down by long term exposure to naturally occurring bacteria and by physical processes like friction, sun exposure and other stuff. Neoprene foam’s main use – and the way we use it – is as an insulator, and it’s especially good when used for human insulation because it’s non-reactive; hardly anybody develops a neoprene allergy. Improvements in neoprene quality have probably been the single thing most responsible for the massive improvement in wetsuit quality in the past five to 10 years. In the past, Japan made the world’s best wetsuit neoprene and priced it accordingly, but as the bigger wettie makers have grown and developed factories in south-east Asia, they’ve invested in regional neoprene manufacturing. The result? Super high grade neoprene can be found in wetsuit ranges across the board, not just in Japan.

PANEL
A tricky name given to a piece of neoprene within a wetsuit, usually with a flat sealed exterior lining to prevent evaporative cooling.

PSYCHOLOGY
To rubber up or not to rubber up? This profound question once had a simple answer: when it’s too fucken cold to do without. But in recent years, more and more surfers seem to be full-suiting it in conditions where keeping warm is just a non-issue. This causes some bafflement among surfers who grew up (not so long ago) in the days when wetties felt like they were made out of cardboard and sandpaper. Wetsuit experts cite a range of reasons for people rubbering up more than ever these days, from concerns about sun exposure to protection from their own or other people’s surfboards.

Improvements in materials are making the wettie an easier proposition: “The rubber’s the best there is these days, I think that might be a factor,” says Quiksilver’s Troy Brooks. “They’re not a hassle to get on and off anymore. You might once have stayed in your boardies as long as you could, but today a 4/3 feels like a 1mm suit used to.” But some user research is turning up a fascinating possibility: that for many people, putting on a wettie is part of psyching up to go surfing. “The psychology is that you’re just more ready to go and do it when you’re wearing the uniform,” says Adam Brissenden.

Billabong’s Scott Boot cites a pile of user feedback he’s been gathering from ordinary surfers who’re out there living rubber psychology; one example comes from Jake Zack from Port Washington, New York. “Growing up surfing NY, the perfect wetsuit definitely has to be the perfect motivator as well,” reckons Jake. “Surfing in blizzards, waters that hover in the low 30sF and harsh winds, motivation is half the battle. I don’t have ugg boots to help me motivate myself, half the time I’m paddling out alone and the waves are often far from perfect but with a perfect wetsuit it’s like all the elements are gone.”

REPAIRS
As seams get better and one-sided neoprene rarer, wetties are increasingly difficult to damage (other than by long term lack of TLC and resulting breakdown). Wetsuit companies are typically quick to address warranty-type problems like a seam collapsing or taping coming unglued, and you should use the warranty wherever possible.
Little slices or nicks in the neoprene on a suit’s non-evaporation panels (if it has ‘em) can occur through contact with a fin, rocks, anything sharp really. You can repair such little slashes using either specialist wetsuit glue from a dive shop or a regular waterproof glue from your local hardware (Selley’s Kwik-Grip is an example). Make sure the suit is dry and follow the gluemaker’s instructions. No…UV surfboard resin won’t work. Try not to stitch these little cuts – whenever you stick a needle into neoprene, you’re doing it a little bit more damage.
Bigger rips and tears and damage outside the suit’s warranty…well this kinda depends on how skilled you, or somebody you know, happen to be with needle and thread. Wetsuits are essentially a form of clothing and can be stitched together like old jeans – as long as care is taken and the thread is a) water resistant and b) not too thick or tough (or it’ll rip the rubber). Professional wettie repairers do exist, just like surfboard ding repairers, but good ones are (like ding repairers) not super common. Try dive shops for best results, or contact the wettie maker for advice.

SEAM
The join between separate pieces (or panels) of neoprene, connected by stitching, glue, neoprene fusion, tape, or a combination of these. Wettie makers think of seams as a necessary evil and do their best to reduce the number of seams in any suit, but are restricted in this mission by the need to vary rubber thicknesses throughout the suit and by human physiology; arms and legs really get in the way. In time seams may become semi-irrelevant (see FUTURE, the).