> It has been my personal experience that solid paddlefloats suck! They are > big and bulky and difficult to carry, and they have less floatation then the > inflatables. I have not done a great deal of paddling in really cold water, > but it would seem to me that if that was your inclination you should either > have a bomb proof roll or be wearing a drysuit - or both! Either way I > believe the paddler will find greater benefit from carrying an inflatable > paddlefloat over the hard one. The extra seconds you may save are just not > worth the overall aggravation. > My 2 cents. > > Scott > So.Cal. I quite agree with your assessment of foam (solid) paddle floats. However, in really cold water, you lose a lot of ability to get an inflatable one blown up, and in really cold water, this is not something you want to be fooling around with. I go out in *quite* cold water once or twice a winter -- ice floating by and snow on the ground. I don't roll. I wear a dry suit, but even there, it doesn't take long in really cold water for the cold to sap your strength. And the drysuit doesn't do a thing to help your lips form a seal around the inflation tube, or to help control your breathing if you've gone underwater and you're gasping for breath and panting. The extra seconds you save can be the difference between making it or not. The drysuit also doesn't help at all to protect the plastic inflatable float from cracking in the cold, or catching on something in your cockpit when you drag it out, especially since your motor control is minimal at best in those conditions. And, finally, I still say that a leak in an inflatable in warm water in inconvenient; in icy cold water, it can be a killer. Do you check your inflatable *every* time you go out? I know I don't. -- Darryl *************************************************************************** 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 Oct 16 2006 - 16:12:35 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:31:21 PDT