Hopefully this information is interesting and useful. Keep in mind that everyone's thermostat is different and what works for one person in a certain temperature environment may not work well for the person next to them.
As you have seen from my recent post(s) I am currently training guides for the summer season of guiding on Lake Superior. We have had a cold spring and the lake is still quite cold. We have seen some form of ice each day on the beach we are launching from. In fact we had fresh ice this morning. The guides in training and I have done assisted and self rescues Tues, Wed and Friday this week. I do more swimming/demonstration than they do (by design) since they are in wet suits and I have a dry suit.
They are doing quite well with wet suits with poly base layers
underneath and a fleece over the wet suit and a spray jacket over that.
The big complaints are hands and feet and ice cream headaches on those
occasions where their heads (or mine) get underwater. We try not to get
our heads wet except the first day when a wet exit was required.
I am wearing a dry suit with a light wool/synthetic blend top and bottom as insulation and a fleece shirt and heavy wool socks. Surprisingly even being in the water to demonstrate all the rescues before they got to pick one to try (maybe about 20 minutes) I was ok, with my feet and hands getting coldest. I would have thought that the light base layer on the bottom would be way insufficient. I think that the feet getting cold is a combination of two things. They are in water in the bottom of the kayak after self rescues and the neoprene booties over the dry suit are probably compressing the wool socks too much.
For those of you who say a wetsuit is inappropriate for this environment, yes, it probably is, by itself, but it can be augmented to work. Would they want to be in the water for more than about 5 minutes or so? No! But that is why I damper down other risks (waves and such) on cold water/weather days. The cold in itself adds the risk back.
I am wearing a dry suit with a light wool/synthetic blend top and bottom as insulation and a fleece shirt and heavy wool socks. Surprisingly even being in the water to demonstrate all the rescues before they got to pick one to try (maybe about 20 minutes) I was ok, with my feet and hands getting coldest. I would have thought that the light base layer on the bottom would be way insufficient. I think that the feet getting cold is a combination of two things. They are in water in the bottom of the kayak after self rescues and the neoprene booties over the dry suit are probably compressing the wool socks too much.
For those of you who say a wetsuit is inappropriate for this environment, yes, it probably is, by itself, but it can be augmented to work. Would they want to be in the water for more than about 5 minutes or so? No! But that is why I damper down other risks (waves and such) on cold water/weather days. The cold in itself adds the risk back.
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