I'm on the side of the wetsuit-drysuit wearers. I think I'm a good paddler, and I am very unlikely to come out of the boat unless I want to. But the operative word is "unlikely", and I'm a "good" paddler, not a perfect one. It's not "impossible" for me to come out of the boat. Few to none of us are perfect. Few to none can predict the future precisely. So I wear protection against cold water. It's been said that we should all asses our skills and our comfort levels. Okay. People do bungie jumping, hang gliding, sky-diving on those bases. A few people jump motorcycles over lines of cars. They believe they have assessed their skill levels and their tolerances for risk. Most of them are okay - but some are not. The thing which bothers me the most about this string is that I fear that there will be some people who read it and think they know their skill levels, but overestimate those skills. Jackie's point is very valid - there are many reports of kayakers who died from hypothermia (please don't get to splitting hairs with this "oh they really drowned" stuff), but none I've read in which kayakers died of hyperthermia. Bill Hansen *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Fri Aug 06 1999 - 12:54:23 PDT
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