susanemohr wrote:
Our lake temp. rarely gets above 60 and air temp is rarely above 70 even in the heat of summer. I'd like to extend the season and be more comfortable when it's warmer but I need different clothes - I froze to death last summer. ... What do you wear to stay warm, dry and extend the sailing season?
I wear a dry suit for paddling my surf ski in protected water and a wet suit for windsurfing. If I paddle in the ocean, I prefer a wet suit - but do not always wear one.
Each has it's advantages.
One danger of the dry suit is that one can wear different degrees of thermal protection under it and I am continually tempted to dress light so I do not overheat when paddling. The lower effort level of sailing might mitigate that temptation......
My solution is to, after every paddle, flop into neck-deep water and just fool around for awhile to see how long it takes for the chill factor to get scary.... that tends to keep me calibrated.
The major upside of a dry suit is, of course, comfort and freedom of motion.
But a downside is that, if it floods, you have a problem.... maybe a beeeeeeg problem if you are immersed and have to heave yourself (and heaven-only-knows how many pounds of water) up on the the bottom of a capsized boat.....To see how a dry suit can become flooded without any visible failure, make a really hard fist and look at the inside of your wrist. ....See the grooves between the tendons? ...... Exactly......
Maybe not exactly a downside, but something to be mindful of: competant people in a clear frame of mind have been known to go out in a dry suit having forgotten to close the zipper. That is one reason to take a little full-immersion dip in a dry suit before setting out. ......... Another being to burp out excess air.
The advantages of a wet suit are:
- Inherant flotation: You float like a seal.
. - Impact Protection: You get banged around a little and there are fewer bruises.
. - Streamlining.... Once you ditch the PFD, you can swim in a wet suit. You can *try* to swim in a dry suit, but you're not going anywhere because the folds/loose material catch too much water. In fact, competition swimmers that I know look down on triathlete swimmers because they wear dry suits - which so enhance their streamlining and reduce effort that the competition swimmers say it's not really swimming - more like paddling a surfboard.
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