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Sea Kayaks Techniques Bulletin Board
Moving to the next level
Posted By: Brianne Corbett In Response To: Perhaps useless was too strong of a word. (Brian Nystrom)
Date: Tuesday, 5 March 2002, at 5:36 p.m.
: It's not the problem of keeping water out of the cockpit that concerns me,
: it's the problem of keeping your body dry in the event of a capsize and/or
: swim. Without a seal at the waist, the jacket will flood immediately. I
: realize that no paddling jacket is 100% water tight, but they definitely
: reduce the amount of water intrusion, the rate at which it intrudes and
: the amount of exchange that takes place, all of which increase warmth
: compared to an open-bottomed garment.Hi Brian...
I am not a dry suit lover. Dry suits scare me because I am afraid of not closing a zipper properly, tearing, or puncturing the suit. Either situation means a very, very serious exposure... a situation in which I though I was protected but I really wasn't.
I always wear a wet suit when paddling. The colder the water the more neoprene I wear. If the water starts to really get cold, I will wear a dry top over the neoprene with fleece under the neoprene. I like having lots of layers... with one fool proof layer... the neoprene.
Consequently, I was never intending the Ocean Parka as an immersion drysuit. I was thinking of it as a storm jacket/pfd needing no waterproof integrity at all. In the unlikely event that I went over, my basic protection is still the neoprene... though the parka could still provide some valuable protection as well.
As I thought more about it, I realized that a clever person could turn the parka into a drytop or paddling top. It might involve considerable alteration, but it can be done. The interesting thing is that several of the foreign manufacturers wil essentially custom make the parkas. So we need to identify what alterations would make this idea work. By finding a way to make these products useful, we evolve our current state of the art.
Consider, for example, the strobe light. The strobe on my L'Ocean is on the back of the jacket. The strobes on the Ocean Parkas are on the front of the jackets. The reason is that the auto-inflating PFD's will float you face up because of the high bouyancy and the design. This means that the strobe will only be seen if it is on the front of the parka. A strobe on the back will be underwater.
My L'Ocean strobe is useless if I am floating face up. I must float straight up and down or face down (bad) for the L'Ocean strobe to be valuable. Logically, the L'Ocean strobe should, at least, have gone on the front shoulder and not the back shoulder.
But for thinking about how to make the Ocean Parka viable as a sea coat for kayakers, I might never have realized that my strobe is practically worthless in its present configuration. I need to change it.
The lesson I learned from all this is that there is a lot of room for evolution of sea kayaking protective gear. Indeed, who better to provide the springboard for this evolution than us? We live for kayaking. We care about the health of the sport itself... the safety of all kayakers... even the dumbbells who don't care about themselves.
Discussions like these can help manufacturers understand what they can do to improve their products. Indeed, maybe we can cause entirely new products to emerge as our experiences become translated into new ideas.
Safe Paddling!
Brianne
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