[Paddlewise] Gloves & Booties (was: First trips of the year)

Second trip of the year was today, another 3 miles up and 
down someone else's coast (Harpswell Neck).  It was a sunny, 
cold, windy afternoon.  Forecast was for winds to be lessening 
in the afternoon, but winds were, in fact, rising from 10 to 20 
knots.  Did we turn around and go home?  No, we did not, even 
though the boats were nearly blown out of our hands when we 
were lifting them off the car.  Sitting still in the boat, or paddling 
lightly, facing the wind, you moved backwards.   So it was 
perhaps more of a workout than I had in mind, but fun 
nonetheless.  It felt good to taste salt spray again.

-----------

Great minds must think alike.  I was just down the coast at Portsmouth
Harbor, NH on Saturday for my first outing (calling mine a trip would be a
little pretensious).  The conditions were about the same with maybe a little
less sun.

I paddled over to a sandy beach on Kittery Point and waded out into the
water.  In addition to my brand new Kokatat Gortex dry suit, I had polyester
sock lines, fleece socks and zippered booties and had the ankle gaskets over
the booties to keep water from coming in from the top.

Ha, Ha!  Good one.  The overlapping gaskets made a very nice conduit for the
water as it flooded in through the bootie zippers.  As I waded out, the
water inside the dry suit remained about an inch or two below the outside
water level.  My shins were soon aching with cold.

Under the dry suit I had polyester long johns and Polartec 100 top &
bottoms.  I figured the combination would give me a protection value of
about  Polartec 200, a guideline figure for these conditions that Ralph
mentioned a while back.

The legs weren't full of water, I guess it just ran up the clothing.  When I
got out over waist high I sank down into the water and started to float.
The water shifted to my calves & hamstrings and settled around my butt.

Hot blooded individual that I am, the water inside the suit seemed to warm
up and I wasn't taking on any more water (I sound like a sailboat or
somethng).

I was very comfortable floating around in 40F something(?) degree water.  I
could have stayed for hours the way my top felt.  The wet bottom would have
probably started to cause a chilling in 15-30 minutes and it would probably
have been downhill from there.

The cheapy neoprene gloves offered no protection from the cold water, even
with polyester liners underneath and I got them up out of the water in a
hurry.

Later, at a local store I saw some fleece lined polyester gloves for $20US
but don't know how much of an improvement they would be.  I was thinkiing
about using some leather palmed fleece gloves I used last year with a pair
of Goretex mittens I also have for wet, windy days.  I think the key there
would be to have a relaxed grip and not try to choke the paddle to death.
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