Chest waders as an alternative

Options
There are many viable options, but waders are probably a waste of money. If you enjoy boating in the winter, a good wetsuit or full drysuit is what you really want.



On a cool windy day, even a wetsuit might not be enough unless you have a shell over it and you have practiced self rescue in those conditions. The faster you can get out of the water, the less you “need”, but if there is any chance for an extended swim, a drysuit with insulating layers underneath is the only real option.



I would probably just take a couple of drybags with dry clothes and saty at the shoreline before I’d do the waders. But, you have to be able and willing to completely change clothes if you swim and cut your day short if you get down to one set of dry clothes.



Look for “Cold Water Boot Camp” video to see the real effects of cold water…

I just posted
my drysuit on the classifieds NRS extreme

My Chota Mukluks leak over the top
and I wouldn’t want to swim in them.



Other people don’t have leakage over the top of their Chota Mukluks.

Glad someone else is seeing
the same thing. Watching the videos of the KaBoat owner from Finland, one can get a good idea of how this type of boat handles, and especially seeing how he maneuvers the boat and gets in and out of it. It seems to be incredibly stable. There’s a video of someone else on Youtube showing a guy standing up in the boat and “dancing”. You can’t really get that crazy in a canoe, let alone a kayak. Of course there’s still the issue of waders potentially filling up with water, but a lot of instances of people drowning indicate that the victims did not have a waist belt which slows infiltration of water and furthermore they never seem to be wearing pfds either. I NEVER get in any watercraft without a pfd.