RE: [Paddlewise] Cold Water Clothing

I live and usually paddle in southern California where very cold water,
on a very cold morning, during a very cold winter might be as low as
51F. Still we use wetsuits or farmer John/dry-top combinations, or
sometimes just shorts and a dry top for some activities like surfing or
rock gardening. Nothing here ever comes close to justifying a full dry
suit, so none of us have them.
The consensus (non-scientific) among the people I paddle with is that
dry tops are not just more comfortable, but considerably warmer. By
wearing enough poly under them, they can even be unbearably warm.
             Steve Brown

-------------------------
Just for the fun of it, some months ago I tried to see if there had ever
been 
any objective research on the insulating differences between wetsuits
and 
drysuits.  In other words, if you wear a wetsuit or a drysuit in X
degree water 
for Y minutes, what is the effect of each on maintaining body
temperature? 

I launched myself out into the Internet and contacted the Navy, the
Coast 
Guard, wetsuit and drysuit manufacturers, universities that had done
research 
on hypothermia, and people who had done research on the insulating
properties 
of various fabrics.

What I expected to hear was something like this:  "a 180 pound man with
15 
percent body fat wearing thus-and-such wetsuit in 40 degree water will
lose 3 
degrees of body temperature in 20 minutes; the same person wearing
thus-and-
such drysuit will lose 3 degrees of body temperature in 40 minutes."  Or

something like that.  But that's not what I heard.

I actually got responses from some of these folks.  The general theme of
the 
responses was "well, you see, this is very difficult, there are a number
of 
factors, it all depends. . . ," and so on.  It appears that there never
has 
been any research on the topic.  At least, I couldn't find any, nor
could I 
find anyone who had heard of any.  The most "solid" information I got
was the 
assumption that since a drysuit is more comfortable in cold water, that
it 
would help you to maintain body temperature "longer."  But there was no 
indication as to how much "longer" would be.

So it appears that there is no one who actually has any *data* on how
much 
longer a drysuit would let you tolerate cold water vs. a wetsuit.  I was
very 
surprised by this.   

jim holman

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