britt and i are talking about hitting the great salt lake this spring. we could go today because the salt water rarely comes close to freezing but i don't even want to touch the water in freezing temps. anyway, when the temps get to about 60, we figure we should be able to get out on the water and be comfortable. the one thing i am conserned about is the water temperature. hypothermia can set in in a matter of minutes if there is a capsize and i want to be prepared for the worsed. gsl is a big lake and has a reputation of being unpredictable. you can usually plan a good trip if you keep trak of the weather but it can still suprise you. honestly, i don't think i will ever flip my boat but just in case......
wet suits are costly and i don't expect i want to wear one for the enire journy. there has to be a better form of cold water protection..... is there? lots o layers?
The US coast gaurd says that an average person wearing a life vest in 50 degree water for 50 minutes has a 50% better chance of survival than without. An hour is as long as you can expect to survive in water that cold. Layers will help but once the clothing is sodden it will loose much of its insilating affect. Most clothing insilates by trapping layers of air near the body. I would suggest that at 60 degrees you will be very unhappy very quickly regardless of how many layers you wear. A wet suit isn't really all that expensive.Â
Much depends on body mass and how "tolerant" of cold you are. Some people (yankees mostly) are capable of taking cold better then others. Practice also helps. Taking cold showers a few times a day during the previous week could increase your tolerance a bit.
In the end, you just shouldn't put yourself in the position to test you ability to resist hypothermia's effects.
You have about 5 minutes of rational thought processes in low 30 degree water. Once you lose the ability to think clearly, you drown pretty quickly. In low 40 degree water about 10 minutes, 50's maybe 15 to 20, the low 60's is bath water to most yankees, but body core temperature will drop sufficiently enough to affect you in a half hour, but you can carry on for about an hour.
The bottom line is core temperature. If your body looses a couple of degrees, your extremities get numb and complex tasks are difficult to perform. This is the first signs of hypothermia.
If your body drops a couple of more degrees, then your shivering will become uncontrollable, all motor skills are nearly useless, but you can usually still manage to tread water, but it's a very labored effort.
Once you get your body down, say 8 to 10 degrees below normal, the shivering stops and your body is in "self preservation mode". This causes all the blood vessels to constrict closed, keeping as much blood in the brain and vital organs as long as possible. You're near death, turning blue, unable to walk, lose of motor control functions and you drown. Fortunately, most have passed out or are so disoriented at this point that you're not even aware that you're about to drown. Your body just kind of shuts down, you go gently to sleep and if swimming . . . well . . .
What can you do (besides not falling into really cold water). Lots of layers. Wet suits have limited effectiveness. If the exposure will be short duration (a couple of minutes) then a wet suit is a waste of time, because your body heat will not have warmed up the trapped water enough to make it comfortable to wear, before you get out. If you expect to spend enough time in the water (like a surfer or swimmer would) where the water trapped in the suit will get warmed through body heat, then it's a good idea. In really cold water, such as below 50 degrees, a wet suit is useless and you need a dry suit.
An over weight person will lose body heat at a slower rate then a skinny guy. This is the body mass thing I mentioned, so if you're a "well fed" person, your chances are better.
With only one exception, every capsize I've been in (read dozens) I was back on the boat within a few minutes. Most folks, even in really cold water can tolerate this amount of exposure. Having a dry change of cloths will make your day, in the event of a problem. So, layer up, spill air if you get over pressed, reef early and have enough dry cloths to make the worst day, a funny story to tell your grand kids, rather then the comment on your tomb stone.
Greetings all,
That 50-50-50 rule quoted by Chris is that with a life preserver, 50 minutes in 50 degree water and you have a 50% chance of surviving ... period ... providing somebody plucks you out of the water, because like Paul says, after twenty minutes you will have neither the strength nor the brains to do it yourself. Without a life preserver you have ZERO chance of surviving.
The boys here in Chicago who sail into late October wear dry suits, which is like a wet suit, only the suit is buoyant, the booties are attached, and everything is water-tight with seals at wrists and neck. After November, it is hard to go sailing here because most of the marinas have a November 1st deadline for getting the boats out of the water. After that, the water gets a little hard.
So what do the speed freak sailors do after November? Well, they bring out their kite-foils and wake boards and go surfing in Lake Michigan ... in a dry suit of course. Seriously, I have been on the beach being sandblasted by 25 mph winds in February trying to get good photos while they blast along just outside the Waukegan breakwater. It does take some planning though. You have to be sure the pack ice has been blown off-shore, preferably out into open water so that you have a nice clean lane between the sand and the ice.
Surfing in 44 degree water ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1PuIRzJcbY
Cheers,
Tom
Dry suits are very different then wet suits, though both typically are made from neoprene. A wet suit allows water to get between it and your skin, which is warmed by body heat, forming a thermal layer between you and the cold stuff. It's only good for moderate exposure and moderate temperatures.
A dry suit is just like the name suggests and keeps the skin dry (well sort of) and relies on heavy insulation. They can be purchased in different weights, which relate to temperatures they're rated for. They are more cumbersome to work in, but you'll last longer in colder water.
The 50/50/50 rule is a bit deceiving. One clever little fact they don't tell you is just wearing a PFD (now recently renamed back to life preserver again) increase anyone's chances of survival by 50%, regardless of water temperature.
When I had a charter in the islands, one of the first things I would do once in deep water, out of sight of land, was the MOB drill. I'd toss a tee shirt over the side, count to 5, then yell "man overboard". The person to spot the tee shirt got a spin at the helm or some other useful thing to do. More often then not (much more often) the tee shirt was never seen again, which was the point of the drill, not to practice picking up a survivor, but not to require this need in the first place, because frankly, by the time we'd find you, it would be body recovery not rescue.
Bluntly, your chances of survival in warm water isn't very good, simply because you can't be seen with less then a smoke bomb and flare gun and only if someone is looking directly in your direction. If you're seen actually falling over board, you have a better then 50/50 shot of getting picked up. If 5 seconds goes by, before someone notices you're over the side, you odds drop so dramatically, you might as well just stick your head under and inhale deeply.
Fortunately in the lakes, rivers and bays that the great and vast majority of these boats putter around in, being seen or rescued is much more likely. There aren't any swells to swallow you up or block your view from those looking for you. The general conditions, even on a worst case situation, isn't anything like a real bad day in blue water.
The moral of the exercise, use your head, bring along safety gear, spare cloths, those thermal blankets that look like plastic tin foil and have some form of communications aboard (cell phone, SSB, VHF, etc.) and a med kit.
Yep, your flares will expire and you'll have to get new ones, but their fun to shoot off when they do and you should be grateful you can use them in jest, rather then in hope, the plane flying along at 20,000 just might see it and call some one to pick up your soggy butt.
i am a feather weight. i am 175 lbs wet and am 6'3". i rarely wear a coat and it is currently freezing temperatures here. water is another tale all togeather. i can tollerate cold air much better than water. i would bet gsl will be about 40-50 degrees by the time i go sailing in 60 degree weather.
oh i know what hypothermia is all about. i got dunked several years ago in a local lake one late october day and the water was about as cold as it gets. we had snow the next day. i remember the shock of the water, loosing my mental faculties and not knowing what to do. i would have sank like a rock if i was not wearing a pfd. after a few seconds of frantic sounds and movements, i got my wits back and felt warmer..... a bad sign i am sure but at that point i was able to swim to shore where my oldest daughter was watching in horror. after i calmed down on shore, i went into the severe stages of hypothermia. my daughter, then about 10 helped me to the van and helped me remove layers and wrapped me in a blanket. after a few minutes she had to put a towel in my mouth to keep me from chopping my toung up from shivering. after a long while of convulsing and my daughter hovering over me, i was able to load the boat and drive us home. i shivered myself silly at home for many hours before i got in the bath tub to warm up because when the blood starts to sirculate through the outer extremities again, the cold limbs can chill the blood and cause a heart attack. i felt cold for a week after that.
i was prepared those years ago well enough that i am alive to tell the tale. i would have died if i were not wearing my jacket. i have never before capsized or since. but before i risk sailing in cold water again, i want to be sure i will be ok. parts of gsl are remote and if i have problems righting the boat because of storm or loss of streingth, i want to be sure that i can wait a while for someone to pluck me out or i wash/swim ashore. the worsed case scenareo is what i am thinking of. i don't really expect trouble though. i just want to be safe.
sounds like i can only consider a dry suit. not terribly comfortable but adequate. i better get a job so i can buy one.
i feel i should point out that the boat i was sailing was a sailing skiff and not a weekender. if i had been in a weekender that day, i would have gone home dry.
If you have to wait any real length of time in 50 degree or cooler water, you need a survival suit, not a general use dry suit. You really can't move in one of these, you pretty much look like a safety orange colored Michelin man and have the mobility of a full up NASA EVA space suit. By any real time, I mean anything more then a few minutes. With your skinny build, you'll loose body heat quickly and you know what happens after that.
If you get in a situation like that again, instead of waiting around to warm up naturally, get in the shower and turn on the cold water. It'll probably feel warm to you. Stand there until it feels cold, then slowly add warm water. This keeps the extremities from pumping cold blood through constricted blood vessels and causing a heart attack or a stroke (most likely cause of trouble). The water will quickly warm you up and the blood vessels will relax to normal diameters. You will have an ass kicking headache though.
I know this because I have a skinny build and though I was a frostbite sailor as a youngster, I've played with hypothermia many times. The older you get, the less dramatic shifts in body temperature you can take. An infant can tolerate complete submersion for a half hour and come out of it with little damage. A pre-pubescent kid can handle 15 minutes, but as an adult, your ability to resist the effects of oxygen deprivation is greatly reduced. This is what kills you and causes the initial disorientation, the lack of free oxygen available in the blood, which the brain needs, literally as food, so does the heart, but the brain locks up first, before the heart stops. This is also why kids can be completely under water for several minutes and still be revived with no brain damage. They process oxygen much faster and more completely then adults. They may not be breathing when pulled from the drink, but their heart is still pumping (abet very, very slowly). I know this because I drove an ambulance in Chicago for a number of years and happened to pull a 9 year old out of the lake after he'd been completely under for 20 minute (estimated, probably longer). He recovered with no damage, though he appeared quite lifeless when we got him out.
Any water temperture below 70 degrees F. is breach of contract. This from a kid raised on Lake Michigan where the old folks die of heat stroke in the 65 degree water! That is about as warm as the big lake gets on the east side and then just at the waters first few feet of depth. I seem to remember the lake boat guys telling that if you went in over in the middle of the lake you had about 15 to 20 minutes in the dead of summer. Unprotected in the winter time was almost sudden death. One needs to be very carefull winter or summer in those lakes up there. Tom do you remember the first year of the salmon runs?
I just flew over Lake Michigan on my way back from New York - it was a series of ICE SHEETS - remarkable from the air. Amazing really to see sooo much water sooo very cold.
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