My Guy Cotton foul weather gear is OK for keeping me dry but it certainly doesn't keep me warm so I decided to get a floatation suit.  My local tackle shop happened to be selling off last year's stock of floatation suits at big discount prices, so this was the time to get one.  I chose the Penn Climatec II two piece suit firstly because of the name, it's one I trust, and because it seemed to be the most sturdily built suit of those I looked at in the shop.  The normal RRP of this suit is £160, but I got it for just £100 - quite a bargain.

The first thing I noticed when I put the suit on is that I still had quite a bit of freedom of movement, certainly more than I had with the last floatation suit I owned, but that was a long time ago and I think materials have improved a lot since then.  The jacket has a main zip from its base right to the top which has a protective flap over it fastened down by velcro.  There is a waist belt with a snap together plastic clip. There are 4external pockets in the jacket, two slant which are fastened by plastic press studs, and two large bag pockets fastened by velcro.  There is one large internal pocket and a very handy pocket under the main zip flap which means that you can get to it without having to unzip the jacket - nice idea.  There is a built in hood to the jacket which tucks away into a pouch under the jacket's collar.  However, when the hood is tucked away in this pouch the collar will not lie flat so I leave the hood out of its pouch and resting down the back of the jacket so that I can flatten the collar down. The jacket sleeves have rubber seals at the wrists which take a bit of getting used to because they protrude beyond the fabric of the sleeve, but once the jacket is on and you are busy you don't notice the rubber seals that much.  The jacket meets all the appropriate CE standards for bouyancy (50 Newtons) and waterproofing.

The bib and brace type leggings come up to mid chest height and have a zip from the top to the crutch, again covered by a protective plap.  The leggings were too long for me, but this is nothing new since I need a Medium size but have only a 29" leg, (I must cut down on the Cornish pasties!!).  This turned out not to be much of a problem though because the leggings have a velcro strap fastening about 6" up from the botton of the leg and I find that I can turn the leg up inside itself at that point and the velcro strap stops the turn in from dropping gain. There are 4 large bag pockets in the trousers fastened with velcro.  The shoulder straps are very substantial and have excellent adjusters on them which do not slip, unlike the ones on my Guy Cotton bib and brace which are a pain because they are always slipping.  However, I was disappointed to notice that the plastic adjusters on the shoulder straps of the leggings are wearing away at the lining of the jacket to the extent that the lining is not going last too long at those two points.  I am going to contact Penn about that because it definately seems to be a design problem, and I can't see an easy answer to it.

All in all I am impressed with this Penn floatation suit.  It's comfortable, incredibly warm and weatherproof and it gives a surprising amount of freedom of movement for the amount of bouyancy it provides. OK I haven't jumped overboard to test the bouyancy, but I'll assume 50 Newtons is 50 Newtons!  It's a pitty that the jacket lining gets shredded by the legging shoulder strap adjusters, and it would be nice to be able to tuck the hood away and lay the collar flat, but apart from these two observations I think the suit is a very good buy - even at full RRP.