We are a group of seniors at Homer High School in upstate New York and are in the beginning stages of our senior project for our Engineering, Design, and Development (PLTW) class and were wondering if you could take our survey as part of our collecting market research stage? Let us know if you have any questions and thank you in advance!
Survey Link: https://forms.gle/hWVcnWziwwvhwGV26
I’m sitting here in the camp ground at 81 degrees. Don’t think wet hands tomorrow will be a problem. Even after the cold front changes things to 70.
Your survey fails in one instance. The question about whether you keep dry or not during paddling should also have the option “I don’t care if I get wet, being wet is a natural part of kayaking”.
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This survey becomes unanswerable for me by about question 3 or 4. Since like willowleaf I don’t care about getting splashed, there is no answer for me for all of those questions.
I am not sure what the fixation is with staying dry in a kayak, but if you want a useful survey you should probably revamp that area.
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While I appreciate that your school group is trying to find a problem for which they might develop a marketable solution, it would be wise to investigate whether having wet hands actually is an issue. You’ve made the mistake of skewing your questions so that you get an answer you already desire and not the actual facts. That is bad science and poor research.
The truth is that there are already many products commonly available that mitigate uncomfortable water saturation for paddlers. Kayakers use sprayskirts to keep water out of the cockpit and wear protective clothing like wetsuits and drysuits and waterproof boots when exposure to colder water or wind evaporation would be hazardous to health and life. For hands, there are all sorts of gloves and pogies (sleeves that fit over the paddle shaft to protect hands from cold and wind). But since contact with the paddle is very important in control of the boat and kayaking pleasure, handwear has to permit more flexibility and comfort than many types of more “protective” material and construction might allow.
Honestly, I have never really thought about my hands being wet – it only occurs to me when I stop for lunch and use a disinfectant wipe to remove funky river water from my hands before I eat. Other than when the water is very cold (under 50 degrees) I only wear gloves, usually fingerless ones, to protect the backs of my hands from sunburn and to protect against blisters from the paddle on long trips. My hands are always wet when I kayak because I use a Greenland style paddle at a high angle that creates a lot of runoff.
As I said before, most paddlers accept the fact that kayaking and canoeing are wet sports and that does not really bother us. If we were that bothered by being wet we would probably stay on the dock and just watch.
I don’t see the merit of this survey. Should another survey be done for water skiers that are concerned with getting wet feet?