The idea has been kicking around as to how much protection to have in terms of cold water protective clothing. There is no real answer especially for areas where you have a period of time in which air temperatures rise while water temperatures remain cold. So you have San Francisco or Lake Superior (cold water year round, seasonal high air temperatures) or the Middle Atlantic area such as NYC or DC (transitional periods of cold water, warm air tempertures). Products like HydroSkin or Watersports Polartec or Fuzzy Rubber are an answer as long as you recognize that the cold water exposure protection they give you is limited to X minutes or so; and, moreover, once you are back in your boat may leave you chilled (with HydroSkin and Fuzzy Rubber being somewhat better than the Polartec unless you have a paddle jacket over it). I think it was Matt who pointed out that the fellow who died on the lower Potomac recently would have probably died even in a dry suit with tons of insulation under it if exposed long enough in the water (say that he went over late in the day and was in the water overnight). So what are your choices? Dress for _both_ the air and the water. Now before you rush to keystroking a reply, hear me out. At some point, you have to concede to air temperature or at least have some provision for cooling down. While one can actually wear a dry suit (even a coated one) into pretty high temperatures (my limit has been days up to about 70 in my coated one), at such higher air temperatures you do need to vent. That lets out a dry suit unless you want to paddle with the zipper open which has its potential dangers and drawbacks and is not advisable. That also lets out a dry top I would think since it won't vent at the wrists. I have a dry top and never have understood their functionality unless it is one with a latex neck as well as latex sleeves. Most sold today do not have latex necks and would likely get water trapped in the sleeves in a capsize and seriously affect your re-entry attempts. So a normal paddle jacket would do well here worn over one of those products mentioned in the first paragraph above. Something like HydroSkin in a two layer setup of a shirt over a farmer john of the stuff would be pretty good. You could vent at the sleeves and neck and if you capsize, cold water would not be constantly flushing in and out of the jacket in any great amounts as it would not be coming through the material itself. This would help the insulation below (HydroSkin or similar light stuff) work somewhat better. Wear the full regalia on those cold-water/warm-air days and vent or cool down often. People talk about the roto-cooling of rolling. If you are confident in your roll and don't mind the shock of hitting the cold water while super heated from paddling and the warm air, do so. But, face it, well over half of paddlers, even those in this illustrious PaddleWise group, do not have a reliable roll or can't roll at all (I think 80 per cent is still a good figure for the overall non-rolling reliably paddling population). If paddling alone, it is amazing how much dropping your wrists and forearms into the water will cool you off or that old dip-hat-in-water routine of cooling off. If paddling with others, just hang on to their bow and lower part of your lower body into the water. Again, such compromise arrangements that would span warm air paddling over cold water are limited in how much immersion protection they will give you. You really only have minutes to self-rescue, i.e. maybe 15 minutes or so tops depending on just how cold the water is. After that you may not be functioning well enough to self-rescue. Obviously in such situations, you can't afford to lose your boat as you will not be able to swim to shore. (BTW, it was the other Ralph who talked about having swim fins, which Matt questioned in terms of where to keep them on you since your boat would leave with them. I am of the have-a-helium-balloon school of such quick get to shore backups :-)). The point is that warm-air/cold-water days or season are the most insidious in their threat. All you can do is work out some compromise spanning the two opposites that will work the 99.99 percent of the time you are upright paddling and the 0.01 percent of the time you might possibly be in the water. ralph diaz -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph Diaz . . . Folding Kayaker newsletter PO Box 0754, New York, NY 10024 Tel: 212-724-5069; E-mail: rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com "Where's your sea kayak?"----"It's in the bag." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Apr 04 2001 - 09:21:40 PDT
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