When you’re dressing for whitewater canoeing you want to make sure you dress for the water temperature, not just for the air temperature. The air temperature can easily be 85 degrees out and the water temperature can be very cold because the water can come from snow melt or it can just come from the bottom of a reservoir where it doesn’t gain a lot of heat during the season. The way you dress for the water temperature is through layering, you know you can have sort of basic layers; a pair of shorts, and a nice short sleeve, Rasgard can be great for a nice warm day and warm water but when it gets a little cooler you might want to go for a longer Rasgard or a long sleeve fleece on the top and on the bottom when it gets a little cooler you can go for a fleece as well and that can help keep you a little bit warmer. All these under layers are synthetics, so they’re going to keep you warm when they’re wet, they’re not going to be like cotton, which when it gets wet, is just going to keep you colder and keep all the water next to your skin. These are going to help wick the water away from your skin as well as give you some insulation. On top of that you want a wind and a rain layer, and this will keep most of the spray off, it won’t keep you dry, but this is a short-sleeved paddle jacket, which is nice, nice thing to put on top for a nice warm day, you might put some poly-pro on under that or maybe a little Rasgard, thin Rasgard, under that, but that’ll keep most of the water out and that’ll keep the wind off, on a really windy day. Same thing on the bottom, if it’s a little cooler you might use a pair of, uh, paddling pants, again these are nylon, they’re going to keep most of the rain and the water off and most of the wind off, uh, but they’re not going to keep you perfectly dry. On the top, as it gets cooler you can put a long-sleeved paddle jacket on, and these have seals at the neck, so it’s a Velcro seal with neoprene, a similar kind of seal at the wrist, and a shot-cord seal at the waist. Going the next level up from that, you can get into a dry top or a semi-dry top and this actually has latex seals at the wrist, which are going to keep most of the water out, these are going to be almost entirely dry. This happens to be a semi-dry top which has only a neoprene seal at the neck, but you can also get these with latex seals at the neck and this has a double skirt tunnel for kayaking, not really important for canoeing, but again it’s going to give you a little more insulation around your midsection because you have a neoprene layer there, and that’s just going to give you a little more warmth for a cold day. So on a cool day make sure that you’re dressing for the water temperature, make sure you’re protecting your core, keeping your core warm, and uh, the other element here is your head, you want to keep your head warm and if you keep your core warm and you keep your head warm you’re going to stay warm and comfortable and you’re going to have a good day of paddling.
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