You’re on a cold water/cold weather trip, it’s the evening and you are just getting ready to settle in for a quite evening by the fire while you chow down on some grub.

As you walk towards the centre of your campsite you begin the process of pulling your head back through the rubber gasket of your drysuit like some kind of turtle when all of a sudden.  SNAP.  Your head slides through no problem.

You double check just make sure it wasn’t exactly what you were dreading.

Yep, you blew your neck gasket.  If only you had read the Adventure Kayak blog back in March you would have caught the “Spring Tune Up” post about “Drysuit Gasket Care”.

No worries.  I have the quick fix for you that requires only a tube of AquaSeal and you guessed it DUCT TAPE.

1. First thing you need to do is remove the drysuit (just in case that wasn’t obvious) and place it on a somewhat flat working surface.
2. Give the area of the tear a general cleaning and once over to check the extent of the tear.
3. Apply a strip of duct tape on the outside of your gasket to bring the torn edges back together and hold them in place.
4. On the inside of the gasket apply a generous bead of AquaSeal along the re-united torn edges being held in place by duct tape and smooth it out with a stick.  Make sure that the AquaSeal has been pressed down into the crack as this will bond the torn edges together.
5. Place a strip of duct tape on the inside of the gasket where you just finished applying and smoothing the AquaSeal.
6. Firmly but gently smooth out the tape on both sides to work out air bubbles as they weaken the bond.  And you are done.
7. Let it sit over night to set and cure and it should be good to go in the morning when you shove off.  A gasket tearing is a sign of weakness in the material so you should take great care on the remainder of your trip not to over stress it when entering and exiting your drysuit.