I think if kayak makers were more focused on utility than aesthetics, kayak decks would be flat instead of glossy. I know you get a lot of glare off the water when paddling into the sun but why have a deck that's a part of the problem?
As far as safety is concerned, it's my experience that kayakers are easy to spot if their boat and clothing have a lot of contrast... some very dark and some very light. When a kayak is a half mile away or better or you're in low light conditions color isn't an issue... just contrast.
Did similar test myself When my husband had a light yellow kayak and I had a medium-dark blue one, I noticed that mine always felt much hotter to touch on a warm day. Ditto for his (light brown) hair and my black hair. Also for dark vehicles and light vehicles.
Yellow attracts wasps and bees Every time I opened our shed door, the wasps would zoom in and land on my “mango” NDK kayak. Also, upon arriving home from paddling, they would swarm to the deck.
I still prefer the color, though. There are no wasps on the water.
Flatpick, how about squid coat? If we had boats with mind-controlled color coats like the squid and octopus have, we could flash all sorts of interesting things to the surrounding world.
Not in “real life” though! In each of those three photos, the strobe on the camera is the ONLY thing that makes the reflectors show up like that. Power boats almost never shine lights to illuminate objects in front of them. Greyak already pointed this out. When have you ever seen reflectors become visible in the absence of a light source that shines directly at them from the same location as where you are looking from? Road signs, tail-light reflectors on your car, reflectors on bicycles, ALL of these are invisible UNLESS you shine a light directly on a line whose points include you AND the relfector (light shining from any other direction is useless).
Only the first shot is with camera flash. Other light sources are the cause of the visibility of SOLAS tape in other shots.
I have been on the water when a powered vessel is using a light that picks up SOLAS, this has included tugs with barges, ferries, and Coast Guard vessels, among others. This may not be the experience of those paddling Southern seas.
I mostly paddle in the Northeast and have found that SOLAS can make a difference. Again, I am noting it NOT as the only, but as one of many means to be more visible. I do have a white light and whistle attached to my orange pfd which has laser flare in a front pocket etc...
I have also often noted brightly decked kayaks to be more visible at distance (especially in haze or fog) than neutral decked boats. As I have only observed this along the coast of New England and Long Island, I will not assert that the same is true in Southern waters ;-)
As a photographer… … who sees people take pictures with point-an-shoots all the time, I would BET that the flash went off on all three shots, but that the photographer didn’t even know it (modern cameras on automatic mode will trigger the flash under the lighting conditions shown, and because the camera isn’t “smart” enough to know that the subject is too far away to be adequately lit by the flash, the result is terribly underexposed shots like these. This exposure situation is made even worse when reflectors are in the scene because the camera “sees” those intense beams of reflected light and interprets that to mean the exposure level is much higher than it actually is (so the overall scene ends up being even darker)
You can’t side-step the laws of physics and CREATE light out of nothing, so ambient light was not the source here. SOME source of light was directly aimed from the location of the camera toward the boats, and I’d put money on the idea that the camera made up it’s own mind to flash without the photographer even being aware, because I’ve seen the results of shots just like this many many times. I’m sure the stuff is a wonderful reflective material, but that’s all it is, a reflective material, and it needs a light properly directed light source to function.
also in close proximity - AND getting light bounce from very nearby objects. You're judging effectiveness based on this sort of observation?
Let's see a picture of those little SOLAS patches from 1/4 mile or more - with no directed or reflected light sources. Better, let's see how they look from the helm of a boat overtaking your group from astern...
Many of us have see it on kayaks from these perspectives - or I should say haven't seen it.
ANY kayak safety approach that is relying on others to see you is of questionable value anyway. Better than nothing maybe, but I have come to feel safest when NOT seen - but that's stuff for another thread.
The problem isn't so much that SOLAS is ineffective for most kayak uses - it's that people continue to think it is effective - and that it is making them safer. While such products may be looked at as just one more arrow in the safety quiver, they also have a downside in that they foster the all too common and very dangerous mindset of putting some of the responsibility on others to see and avoid them.
Visibility is an important competent - but people talk as if blaze orange gear with some reflective stickers will keep you safe, when at it's best it's still the smallest part of the safety equation.
PS - If you're paddling close enough to "tugs with barges, ferries, and Coast Guard vessels" that their work lights are on you and lighting up SOLAS in broad daylight or at night - well, you might want to rethink this.
PS - "Southern" has nothing to do with it, try applied physics.
Just a reminder that the OP was asking about the utility “beyond safety” and may have already waded through these murky waters.
Having said that, I completely agree that contrast is key to visibility, On a river trip, one of the guys had a paddle with striped paddle blades, yellow and black, that stood out much more than any boat and were much more visible from a distance because of the contrast and the motion.
In low light and at night you gotta rig up lights or wear a headlamp.
" Bright colors = safety" Yep we should all be DRIVING lime green cars. L Driving is the most UNSAFE thing we do yet nobody considers a cars color a safety item? Things that make you go hmmmm.
Other light sources doesn’t = ambient I never stated that SOLAS tape does not require direct light hitting it in order to reflect. Nor did I state that there was no direct light responsible for the reflection evident in the photos.
I also noted instances I have witnessed (tugs, ferries, CG) when a powered vessel is using a light which has caused SOLAS on kayaks and/or paddles to reflect.
I also never suggested that a paddler should rely solely on SOLAS tape to be visible.
Yeah, I filled in a lot of the "blanks" as best I could and apparantly it didn't work out. I wouldn't have assumed anyone would be shining lights for any reason in the daylight scenes, and "other slight sources" didn't imply to me that those sources were either bright enough or directed beams located in-line with the camera's line-of-sight (which is necessary to get a reflection in the picture), so I figured it must have been camera-flash. Anyway, I see pictures like that a lot, the most common example being the reflectors on PFDs showing up brightly while everything else in the scene is way too dark. Normally if you manually shut off the flash, you won't get under-exposed photos like those so that part remains a puzzle (unless the photographer set a lower limit on shutter speed to prevent blurring).
Anyway, I misunderstood what you were trying to say the material can do. I know that it can be hard to convey full meaning without writing "a lot" sometimes. Carry on!
color Before I bought my first kayak 5 or so years ago, I rented a dark green one and paddled around Lake George in NY. Boats would practically run me over as I was invisible until they got real close. I spoke to a few and they said they couldn’t even see me until they were on top of me.
When I bought a boat (Walden Scout) is was red and no one has trouble seeing me. It does have lots of visible scratches but that is to be expected as it gets bumped and dragged quite a bit. But if you were to try to hide it, the red would be like having a target on it. So the tan color would make you visible on the water and easy to hide on land and probably hide scratches too. Good luck and happy holidays.
"way overated" this leaves unspoken the basis for rating. For night time s&r where a searchlight is used it could make the difference between finding the kayak or not just as reflective patches are sewn on pfds.
Certainly high visibility reflective surfaces in and of themselves do not provide an adequate basis for night time safety.
“as ONE of a number of devices…“ exactly. Don’t see why folks are infering something you are not saying.
On my old light gray Mariner I had a few strips of white reflective tape (from a bike shop) on the kayak with a wrap of the 4"x4” ACR solas tape on the paddle shaft below the blade. At night I shined my small low power LED flashlight at it from 200’ away, the amount of light was totally inadequate to lighting up the kayak but the solas tape on the paddle shaft shined back like another flashlight. The old bike reflective tape much less. After that I put four patches of the 4"x4” tape on the kayak, and kayaks I’ve owned since.
These patches aren’t designed to replace judgement or running lights, they’re to provide maximum visibilty for anyone shining a light in your direction.
SAR use was mentioned… … and even then usefulness small patches of tape or even smaller decorative application on a PFD is quite limited (have to pretty much be on top of you) and such operations are rare.
If you do the kind of paddling where you may get into a situation where you need an air rescue at night, better to have than not - but for the majority of paddlers? It’s decorative.
That’s the level of Overrated I’m applying.
I have that deckline with reflective threads in them, but just because I like the way it looks (and night flash fotos are cool too). My PFD has the stuff too. No optional, and does no harm there, doesn’t do much of anything. Maybe if I misplaced it around a campsite…
I believe in having a quiver of means for most things important - an array of signaling devices, extra paddle, extra water, etc... No one thing is usually enough for all situations.
SOLAS is an easy addition to a quiver which includes lights, reflective lines, orange pfd, yellow dry suit, etc...
Yes, I've had the Coast Guard scan me with a white light. Yes, I've had the experience of a tug using a light to sweep the water ahead (I was out of the channel and out of harm's way). I've been on a ferry which picked up the SOLAS of a paddler in a kayak ahead.
My 'southern' reference was half in jest, mostly a way to acknowledge that some paddle waters different than my experience. Most with whom I paddle have the experience of paddling where there are commercial (tugs, cargo, tanker, ferry, lobster, etc...) and/or Coast Guard craft.