SEQUIM — After spending more than 24 hours in the chilly waters of Sequim Bay, the inventor of a new kind of coldwater survival suit emerged Sunday with a body temperature only two-tenths of a degree lower than when he went in.
“I’m warm. I’m toasty,” said Sequim resident Bob Duncan, an airline pilot who came up with the idea for his Breathe4Life suit four years ago.
“It was a great experience.”
It was thought to be the longest anyone has survived floating in cold water. The weekend’s demonstration of the suit at John Wayne Marina was longer than Duncan’s stretch of 18 hours spent floating in waters near Victoria recently.
Duncan entered the 48-degree water shortly after noon Saturday with a body temperature of about 99.6 degrees.
The water temperature stayed pretty steady overnight, but the air temperature dropped as low as 38 degrees.
His body temperature was recorded at 99.4 degrees when he climbed out of the water at 1 p.m. Sunday. Average human body temperature is 98.6 degrees.
Coldwater survival suits are carried on boats at sea to protect people if they go overboard or a vessel capsizes.
The suits commonly used today — known as “Gumby suits” because people wearing them look like the animated character — rely on insulation to conserve existing body heat.
They work, but only to a point. Coast Guard guidelines estimate a 2-hour to 2½-hour window of consciousness for someone in the water wearing a Gumby suit, and at times it takes rescuers longer than that to reach a scene.
Duncan’s suit — made cooperatively by his company, Jonah LLC, and Whites Manufacturing Ltd., a maker of wet suits and dry suits in British Columbia — recycles the heat from the wearer’s exhaled breath.
The wearer breathes into a tube and the air circulates to bladders throughout the waterproof suit. That creates a layer of warm air between the skin and the frigid water, keeping a person’s body warm.
The used air is channeled to an exhaust vent in the chest of the suit, where it is used to keep the wearer’s hands warm.
A person wearing the suit must replenish the air at least every 10 to 15 minutes to keep the temperature even.
That need for continuous replenishing was the only downside of this weekend’s demonstration, Duncan said.
He was never able to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time before becoming chilled.
“That’s the issue right now,” he said after leaving the water. “I’m just tired.”
As part of the demonstration, Seattle television personality John Curley donned a Gumby suit and entered the water Saturday at the same time as Duncan.
Curley lasted one hour and 23 minutes and was reportedly pulled from the water wet, chilled and mostly incoherent.
