Sheet 02 · Clothing
The cold-water layers that earned their place in the March bag
Water here sits between three and five degrees from January to April, and the air is often warmer than the water, which is the combination that gets people dressed wrongly. This is what survived five winters of trying things.
Part 01
Dressing for immersion, not for the drive
The first winter we all overdressed for the car park and underdressed for the water, which is the standard beginner mistake and is not cured by being told about it. Four degree water takes the breath out of you within a second or two, and the useful figure is not how long you can survive but how long you can do anything deliberate. For us that is somewhere between two and five minutes of hands that still work well enough to hold a paddle shaft and clip a tow line. Everything in the bag is chosen around that window rather than around comfort while paddling.
The test we run each March is unpleasant and settles arguments quickly. In two metres of water, in sight of the slipway, with a second boat within a paddle length, each of us goes in fully dressed and tries to do three things: get back into the boat, open a deck bag and close it again, and speak a full sentence clearly. The first year, two of us could not manage the deck bag zip after ninety seconds. Since then everybody's zip pulls have a loop of cord on them and nobody argues about it.
The practical result is that we dress so that the first thirty seconds in the water are survivable and the next five minutes are workable, and we accept being slightly too warm for the paddling. On a still March day at six degrees air, that means being uncomfortably warm for the first twenty minutes until the hands and the spray cool things down. We have never once regretted that trade, and we have twice been very glad of it.
Part 02
The drysuit argument, and where a wetsuit still wins
Four of the group paddle in drysuits from November to April, and three do not, and after five winters the split is not really about money. A drysuit with decent thermal layers underneath is warmer, drier and much better for a long day where you expect to stay in the boat. It is also fragile in a way that matters on a rock coast. We have holed two suits on barnacles while landing on granite, and a suit with a hole in the leg is worse than no suit at all, because it fills and it makes swimming genuinely hard. Everyone who paddles in one now carries repair tape in a pocket they can reach while wearing it.
A thick wetsuit with a windproof top over it is better for trips that involve a lot of getting in and out, which on our coast means practice evenings, short winter trips and any day where we expect to be hauling over rock. It is worse for everything else. It is wet, it is cold in the wind on a long crossing, and in it you get tired earlier in a way that is hard to notice from inside. In February the wetsuit paddlers turn for home about an hour before the drysuit paddlers start thinking about it, and the log shows that clearly.
The one thing both camps agree on is layering underneath, and the mistake we all made at some point was cotton. A cotton t-shirt under a drysuit is a cold wet rag for the second half of the day. Two thin synthetic or wool layers beat one thick one, mostly because you can take one off at the lunch rock without taking the whole suit down to your waist in the wind.
Copied off the sheet
- Drysuit: better for long crossings, fragile on barnacled granite
- Wetsuit and windproof top: better where you get in and out repeatedly
- Repair tape in a pocket you can reach while wearing the suit
- Two thin wool or synthetic layers underneath, never cotton
Part 03
Hands, head and the two cheap things that matter most
Hands fail first and they fail fast. We tried gloves for two winters and never found a pair thick enough to be warm and thin enough to let you feel the shaft, which is a compromise that always seems to land on the wrong side. Pogies, the sleeves that fasten around the paddle shaft and leave your bare hands on the wood, solved it completely. Your hands stay in still air against the shaft, they can be pulled out in under a second for anything that needs fingers, and they cost less than the gloves that failed. Everyone in the group now uses them from October.
The head is the other half. Most of the heat that leaves you in cold water leaves from the head and neck, and a neoprene hood makes a difference so large that the first person to wear one was accused of exaggerating. In our March immersion test, wearing a three millimetre hood roughly doubles the time before the cold headache starts and makes the first thirty seconds far less overwhelming. It is not comfortable, it muffles hearing, and it is worth it. We compromise by starting the trip with it pushed back on the neck and pulling it up before any exposed section.
The cheapest item in the whole bag is a spare wool hat in a sealed bag in the day hatch, and it has been used more often than any rescue equipment we own. Somebody is always cold at lunch, usually the person who has been quiet for twenty minutes. Two hats now live in that bag, because handing over your own means you get cold instead, which we have also proved.
Part 04
What we stopped carrying
Three things left the bag and have not come back. The first is the enormous insulated flask that took up a third of a day hatch. It holds heat beautifully and nobody ever finished it, so it now stays in the car and we carry a small one each. The second is a full change of clothes for every person on every trip. It sounds responsible, but four full dry bags eat the space where the group shelter and the spare food live, and the honest answer is that we need one dry set between the group, near the front of somebody's boat where it can be reached quickly.
The third is the waterproof paper notebook I bought for the log. It worked perfectly and I never used it, because writing anything in a kayak on this coast in winter is a fantasy. The log now gets written at the kitchen table two hours later, and a dictated voice note in the car park catches the numbers that would otherwise be gone by then. That is not a clever system. It is simply the one that has survived contact with cold fingers and a five o'clock sunset.
What did get added, after the second season, is a small waterproof thermometer on a string clipped inside a cockpit. Water temperature guesses are worthless and the difference between eight degrees and five is the difference between two clothing plans. It cost very little, weighs nothing, and half the numbers in this log exist because of it.
Wind speeds are the mean we agreed on at the slipway and not a gust figure, water temperature came off the thermometer on a deck line, and the times are the ones the day actually took. Where a later trip contradicts this sheet, the newer sheet says so and this one stays as written. Corrected 26 Jan 2025.