If you want to stay cool
and protect from the sun and minimize chafing, cotton is not the best choice. When it is wet it stays wet, that does not keep you cool. What you want is something that will let water evaporate from the material, that’ll take the heat away from you. I wear a long sleeve, white rash guard that I got at a surf shop. Something like this http://www.xcelwetsuits.com/products/us/uv
Something like Under Armor would probably work well too.
sun protection
Here are some companies with great products to help protect you: Coolibar.com , Solumbra at sunprecautions.com , solarveil.com and NRS for their rash guards. Seriously look into Tilley hats- expensive but cool, comfortable, rugged with large brim to protect ears nose and neck.
rash guards
come long & shortsleeved, are cut well for paddling, dry quickly and provide UV protection anywhere betw. 25 & 50 SPF.
Plenty of them in all sizes on eBay. I’ve never paid more than $8-10 for mine - get em lightly used, no big deal to me…have seen new ones as low as $10-$15.
Fishing stuff
Check out some of the long sleeve shirts and hats for fishing. The folks that fish the flats wear this clothing and it is great. Most of the stuff has vents so air moves around. We really like ours.
http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/templates/pod/horizontal-pod.jsp?id=0075943&navCount=1&parentId=cat400018&masterpathid=&navAction=push&cmCat=MainCatcat20166-cat400018&parentType=index&indexId=cat400018&rid=
A good layer of 50 weight
sun block then paddle naked.
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Sun Shirt
I wear Kokatat’s Destinations shirt - it has a high collar to protect my neck and the quick-dry fabric is sun protection. A wide brimmed hat and spray skirt cover the rest - hands get some light-weight fingerless paddling gloves. I guide trips each weekend, so spend a lot of time on the water…
Cheers, Alan
long underwear tops
I use lightweight quick-drying long underwear tops. Seconds are fairly easy to find.
you’re supposed to ask for a photo first
(no offense to the OP)
Summer clothes
When it is hot, I wear long-sleeve running shirts and a broad-brimmed hat. Plus sunscreen on my face, neck and hands.
nuthin wrong with cotton
There is nothing wrong with cotton when used under the right circumstances. During hot summer months I like to wear a thin long sleeve cotton shirt. It keeps me cool, protects from the sun, is very comfortable and it does not get stinky like plastic fibers do.
I will second Angstrom’s idea
I find the knit tops (LS) to be cooler than even the Columbia PFG shirts and knock-offs. Bought to be baggy, they work for me.
Rumor has it that a wet t-shirt, while attractive on the fairer sex, is nearly worthless for UV protection.
I am a big fan of wide-brimmed hats (Tilleys to be specific, but I don’t want to open THAT can of worms again). Cotton or hemp, both work. I am less enamored with Tilley’s Nylantium fabric. On hot days, dunk your hat and let the evaporation begin!
Oh, yeah. Tilley recommends a loose fit at the band. This really helps with the chimney effect.
Jim
Capris; half skirt
Two suggestions for your legs:
- For women, capris rather than shorts. Danskin makes some quick drying capris.
- A half skirt provides great sun protection, plus shades your legs and keeps the cockpit cooler.
I like
the Breath like a fish shirts. They’re not cheap but they work good and they last. I’ve been using one for over a year and it is holding up good, so far. The fist one I bought had the long mask, with the hat I wear I don’t need it, so I’m going to get another without the mask.
http://www.breathelikeafish.com/order.html
Long sleeve rash guard
A long sleeve rash guard or UV blocking shirt is good. If you get too hot just splash each other down. A bilge pump is a great tool for that. I usually just roll my kayak along the way to cool down but this is obviously not for everyone.
Gary
Thanks
Thank you all for the replies. I’ll be looking into all this stuff this weekend. 
Agreed. Cotton is fine when both
air and water are warm, as they are for me right now on the Gulf Coast. Air temps in the 90s, water temps in the 80s, I wear nothing but cotton. Those who regurgitate the “no cotton, anywhere, anytime” dogma need to learn to yield to common sense every now and again. Griffin800’s claim about cotton that “once it gets wet, it stays wet” statement is just one example of how people take the “no cotton” orthodoxy too far. Of course cotton dries out, and in a fairly reasonable time, especially light weight cotton garments. It may not dry out as fast as wools or synthetics, but on a hot day with warm water, that longer drying time is not dangerous, and in fact can actually feel kind of good. The only place I won’t ever wear cotton, even in the summer, is socks.
It really is high time we dispense with the kneejerk regurgitation of supposedly hard-and-fast rules like “no cotton, not ever”, or “down sleeping bagsare inferior because they lose all their insulating power when wet.” Honestly, I tried sleeping in a damp synthetic bag, it was colder than sleeping with no bag in my dry clothes, so I did just that.
Chilled in summer storms
I could see in some parts of the country how that might be a problem. However, here on the Gulf Coast, any summer storm powerful enough to lower our subtropical temperatures enough to chill you - then you have bigger problems than being chilled. You should have been off the water before that storm hit. Otherwise, I welcome the little afternoon showers that come off the Gulf, drench me and my cotton clothes for a few minutes, and move on, bringing back the sunshine. so I guess it all depends on your local conditions.
ditto
– Last Updated: Jun-25-10 2:52 PM EST –
Same with blanket statements like "cotton kills!" - I routinely wear a thin cotton tshirt when hiking in the mountains during hot summer days. It cools my core temperature and that is a good thing under these circumstances, and it does not stink like a plastic banshee! - - Of course I have either wool or polypro garments in the backpack in case Cotton decided to kill me but otherwise it is the t-shirt, supplex nylon shorts, wool socks and leather hiking boots and I'm doing great. I've hiked 19 days straight like that and cotton stopped the killing spree with me.
I’m not sure if that is true.
“cotton is not the best choice. When it is wet it stays wet, that does not keep you cool. What you want is something that will let water evaporate from the material, that’ll take the heat away from you”
Generally, the whole premise behind the “cotton kills” dogma among outdoorsmen is that in cool weather, cotton stays wet longer, so it keeps cooling you off, making you loose body heat, which leads to hypothermia. why should this be any different when the temperature is higher?
I think, too, of the times I have gotten caught in a summer downpour in a shopping mall parking lot. Going into the air conditioned mall, I am usually chilled, because my clothes are wet. When I have been wearing all-cotton, I stay chilled a lot longer, because I stay wet a lot longer. If I’m wearing, say, supplex nylon, or tropical wool slacks, I dry off faster and stop being chilled faster.
It seems like the principle here is, the longer you stay wet, the longer you are going to be losing body heat, and in the summer, this can be a good thing, and we all know cotton keeps you wetter longer.