SPEND A DAY on a dive boat wearing a Surf-Fur Parka and your old dive jacket will end up hanging in your closet, forever abandoned.
Like most parkas, the Surf-Fur is purpose-built: you wear it on the boat ride out to the dive site to stay warm and dry; you wear it over your wetsuit during surface intervals to keep the chilly wind from stealing your body heat; and you wear it after the day’s diving to re-warm your core.
But here’s what makes the Surf-Fur Parka special. Its double-sided fleece material is both windproof and waterproof, yet breathable. Made from 100-percent polyester, the inner and outer layers are bonded together by a membrane which allows vapor to pass through, but not water molecules. The fleece is also hydrophobic, holding less than one percent of its weight in water. The result is a soft, comfy surface on both sides. You’ll really appreciate this at the end of the day when the inside of the parka is damp from being worn over your wetsuit. Simply turn the jacket inside out and, once again, you have a dry parka.
The Surf-Fur Parka offers an internal cell phone pocket plus a pair of deep hip cargo pockets that are also special; they allow your hands to pass all the way through, enabling you to wear it as a modesty over-garment when you’re changing in or out of your wetsuit. That’s right—no more dropped towels and embarrassing flashes. That alone should make this parka a keeper.
The SGR team took the Surf-Fur Parka for a test drive last month out to Landing Cove on Anacapa island where we were doing some video work along with gear testing. True to claims, the soft lining felt great on our test divers and the internal collar, combined with the attached hood, really kept the wind out. The parka uses a system of snaps instead of a zipper as a closure, and the long hem drops below the knees, which enabled divers to quickly change from clothes to wetsuit and back again without any wardrobe malfunctions.
At the end of the day, after easily slipping back into street clothes under the Surf-Fur without creating a scene, we reversed the parka to the dry side, flipped up the hood, buried our hands in the warm pockets and settled in for a ride across the breezy channel, heading home in the cozy comfort of a new favorite dive garment.
Learn more about the Surf-Fur at http://www.surf-fur.com
