Re: [Paddlewise] Dry Suits / Wet Suits

From: John Fereira <jaf30_at_cornell.edu>
Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2002 13:44:37 -0500
At 08:13 AM 2/4/02 -0900, sc wrote:
>Rick, the first rule of thumb is that you dress for the water temp, and not
>the air temp.

I wonder how many people know the water temperature before they launch.

I may be a bit of a gear head, but one of the gadgets that I had before I 
ever started kayaking is a stream thermometer.  I'm a flyfisherman, and I 
tie my own flies.  When determining a fly selection for a particular stream 
it is useful to know the temperature of the water.  Typically, mayflies 
hatch at around 50 degrees.  Knowing the water temperature might tell me 
whether or not I can expect a hatch of mayflies sometime during the day.

It could also be useful to know that the water temperature is before 
choosing what to wear.  First you'd want to know the current water 
temperature.  Factor in wind chill.  However, this information isn't really 
useful unless you know at which temperature you're comfortable wearing a 
wet suit, dry suit, fuzzy rubber, or whatever other paddling garments you 
happen to own.  The only way to really tell that is to actually try wearing 
each type of garment, jumping in, and spending some time in the 
water.  From those experiments one might determine that once the water is 
45 degrees, a wet suit isn't sufficient for a long immersion, a subsequent 
check of the water temperature could dictate what you might wear on a 
particular outing.


***************************************************************************
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 Mon Feb 04 2002 - 10:45:23 PST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:50 PDT