A Beginner’s Guide to Cold Water Gear

The act of not putting on or wearing thermal protection like a dry suit or wetsuit when swimming in cold water can be life-threatening with few expectations. The greatest fear is drowning and inhaling the water is flat calm.

Cold water gear is important for your safety when you paddling in the water, that has a temperature below 70F. One of the main purposes of water gear is to keep you warm and worthy of great importance is to guide or protect you from having a subnormal temperature of the body (hypothermal), cold shock and being overpowered by the waves (incapacitation) in the occurrence of capsize.

Producers, help to promote the stability of kayaks in an inconvenient way, but the truth is that any kind of kayak can capsize. The only thing that should be on your mind on cold water after capsize, should be whether you are dressed properly for the immersion.

Many outdoor materials or products are on the market and this article will direct you on how to choose the right gear for swimming in cold water.

Dry Suits

Naturally, a dry suit gives more protection than a shower curtain for you to get protected from cold water, you must wear layers of clothing under the dry suit. The clothing protects you by getting a layer of air within your body.

The tighter the layer of the air the more protection it gives or provides. The major point is that how thick the suit determines the warmth provided. This is to say that when the water is very cold, your insulation has to be thick and it is very much needed at 44F than at 55F.

    An important aspect of a dry suit is that you can subtract or add layers and this depends on the temperature of the water. It is kind of easy to do that first in the case of paddling because on hikes, kayakers will have to go to the river bank to change layers. This is a reason why you need to swim test your gear.

Burping Your Dry Suit

Too much air present in your dry suit can make it feel heavy. A way of solving the problem of excessive air is burping your suit, by squatting down inside the water while pulling the neck seal open with a finger. The layers of clothing is compressed and insulation is reduced, when you “belch” excess air out of the dry suit.

So this makes swim-testing your gear another good reason. It may occur to you that you might need to reduce or add more pressure to the suit.

Paddling Drytops Compared to Jackets

In the aspect of hiking, paddling jackets and waterproof pants will not give you protection inside the water unlike when it is rainy when you get more protection. When it comes to cold water safety, comparing paddling, dry tops, and semi-dry tops by producers is definitely not equal.

The difference between a semi-dry top and dry top is the presence of a neoprene gasket at the neck, instead of a latex one. There may be leakages around the neck, because neo gaskets are not as watertight as latex.

A splash top or paddling jacket is made from waterproof material, but it lacks the ability to be watertight. It is very good in situations during rainfall or a splash of water but in situations of capsizing, the water will definitely flood in.

Wet suits

The thickness of the neoprene depends on the quality of insulation the wet suit provides. So be very sure of the protection a wet suit has before you wear it.

Effects of Wet Suit in Cold water

Many will argue that the wet suit does not have an effect in cold water, which is wrong. In the past, before the production of dry suit, swimmers wear wet suits even in cold and freezing water. The in-depth of this is all about how thick the suit is.

Contact us for high quality

For you to enjoy swimming or paddling in cold water to avoid injuries on your body e.g. your legs, your swimsuit must exhibit enough thickness.

So, if you need good swim gear and other water gear kindly contact us, and we will be glad to partner with you.