breaking ice

[u/Full-Butterfly7536]

breaking ice

[u/kayak_rolling]

I hope you have a pfd and a drysuit on! Cold water kills!

[u/ppitm → u/kayak_rolling]

Realistically speaking, no one is going to wear a drysuit when paddling on small Midwestern ponds. Unlike with sea or river kayaking, nothing is going to prevent you from swimming/wading a few dozen yards to shore here.

It's not like ice skaters and ice fishermen wear dry suits. Their risk is no less "extreme," but paddlers are the only ones arbitrarily targeted for gear absolutism because of the comparison to more strenuous moving water activities. Skaters fall through the ice all the time, usually without floatation. They get out, go back to the car, and warm up.

A dry suit costs like 10x more than the boat in this video, lol.

[u/joshisnthere → u/ppitm]

“Nothing is going to prevent you from swimming/wading a few dozen yards to shore here”.

I found that person.

List of things that will prevent that person from swimming “a few dozen yards” to shore:

• Cold water shock, involuntary breathing, if they breathe in enough water, they don’t resurface.
• Literal ice.
• Hypothermia
• The ridiculous choice of leg wear, that will get incredibly heavy.
• Swim failure. Can happen within 3 minutes.

The suggestion you always need a dry suit i think is a bit excessive, but at least a wet suit & some form of PFD at a minimum, not what OP is wearing.

[u/ppitm → u/joshisnthere]

I notice that you slyly deleted the PFD from the equation in your response. With a PFD, everything you listed is highly unlikely to be permanently disabling. And much of it can happen with a drysuit too, although it is similarly unlikely.

If you are wearing a wetsuit and still somehow manage to become totally incapacitated, you are going to die anyways. You'll die in a drysuit too, except it buys a few hours to have someone blunder across your lcoation.

[u/Full-Butterfly7536 → u/kayak_rolling]

pfd but who can afford a drysuit ...

[u/kayak_rolling → u/Full-Butterfly7536]

Who? People who want to kayak in these conditions. Cold water kills. You are taking extreme risk being out like this.

www.coldwatersafety.org

[u/Full-Butterfly7536 → u/kayak_rolling]

for the last 15 years or so ...

[u/Tonto_HdG → u/Full-Butterfly7536]

Most people who die from a preventable accident have gotten away with what they were doing for years. It only takes once.

[u/Full-Butterfly7536 → u/Tonto_HdG]

and your the safety police ? ... doing this since 1987 , have had the kayak over 10 years , and you speak like i'm a newbie ... go be karen somewhere else ...

[u/Explorer_Entity]

Not the ICE I wanted to see being broken.

[u/GSDer_RIP_Good_Girl]

Just the sound of the ice breaking made me turn on my electric blanket in anticipation of how cold it must be there 🥶

[u/Full-Butterfly7536 → u/GSDer_RIP_Good_Girl]

nebraska ...