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Kayaking Handwear & Footwear FAQ / Buyer's Guide For Kayakers
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At the risk of sounding negative, we have to admit that the worlds of kayak hand-wear and footwear are imperfect at best. At the Kayak Academy we constantly search for better solutions and bring you the best of what is available.
Hand-wear
The most common hand-wear solutions for cold whether paddling are pogies (paddle mitts) and neoprene gloves. Pogies are mittens that wrap and around the paddle shaft and fasten with “hook and pile” material. Then you slide your hand into them and grip the paddle bare handed. This gives you your normal bare hand grip on the paddle while keeping the wind and some of the water off your hands. The down side of pogies is that it is a pain putting your hand back into the pogie after every time you take your hand off the paddle, and the pogies never slide along the paddle well enough to facilitate extended paddle strokes (i.e. turns and rolls). The best thing about pogies is that one size fits all; this makes them an ideal piece of emergency gear for leaders to carry in case someone forgets or loses their gloves. Pogies are available in neoprene or nylon shell fabric with fleece lining. Nylon pogies pack smaller and lighter, but neoprene ones are usually warmer.
Paddling gloves made of 2mm - 3mm neoprene are usually a bit warmer than pogies and more convenient too. There are two basic types of neoprene gloves: ones that work well but don’t last long (especially without maintenance such as described below), and ones that don’t work well at all. Good neoprene paddling gloves look funny because they have a lot of curvature built into the fingers, but without this pre-curved shape your finger muscles get fatigued and your arms ache from fighting the springiness of the neoprene in order to bend the glove around the paddle shaft all day. The thicker the neoprene the more curved they need to be. The good neoprene gloves wear out fast from the abrasion of the paddle rubbing on them, but when glove makers try to fix this by covering the palm with Lycra it ruins your ability to grip the paddle. And when they try to fix that by putting grip dots on the Lycra it actually make them slip even worse – at least that’s how it is on a paddle shaft. So the best neoprene paddling gloves have smooth, bare rubber on the palm side for grip, and claw-like curvature to the fingers. Lycra on the inside is essential to make the gloves easier to pull on and off, and yet easier is a relative term. No neoprene glove that fits well is truly “easy” to put on and take off. Beyond that fit is everything. If they are too tight they will be painfully uncomfortable after an hour or so. If they are too big they will be uncomfortable from the start and not as warm as they should be. If you have long thin fingers, the Glacier Glove Perfect Curve gloves will be best for you. If you have somewhat short thick fingers, the Stohlquist Maw gloves are your best bet.
You can about double the life of a good pair of neoprene paddling glove by smearing a thin sacrificial layer of AquaSeal Adhesive on the wear points (i.e. the crotch of the thumb) before they turn into holes. For best results, apply this layer after the first day you wear the gloves -- when you can just start to see some signs of abrasion. Ideally this smear of adhesive should be paper thin so it won’t feel lumpy.
For paddling in extreme cold conditions, there’s one thing warmer than neoprene gloves, and that’s a dry glove system that attaches to the wrist gaskets on a dry suit. Dry gloves are a bit complicated to install and clunky to paddle in, so we recommend trying the best neoprene gloves you can find first and keeping dry gloves as a last resort. But when it’s really cold they are definitely worth it – especially if you have trouble keeping your hands warm.
For warm weather paddling it’s nice to have a thin fingerless glove that keeps the sun off the back of your hands and gives a little blister protection from the paddle. Years ago paddlers wore bike gloves, but the padding in them gets in the way. When the started making kayak specific gloves like bike gloves they failed to get the grip and comfort right. Recently Stohlquist’s Fingerless glove and Warmer’s Sun Glove have finally met the mark. The Sun Gloves have durability issues, but they are darn comfortable and inexpensive.
Footwear
For lack of anything better, neoprene wet suit booties are the ubiquitous answer for most kayakers. Sandals can be dangerous in a kayak (foot entrapment) and aren’t comfortable anyhow (your heels will rub against the inside of the hull). Water shoes have soles that are too bulky in the toes and heels to fit in a kayak that is the right size for you. And unless you have narrow feet, most wetsuit booties are too narrow -- especially when worn over top of dry socks. The Kayak Academy offers several of the widest booties available including some with very thin soles for use in low volume kayaks and if that’s still too cramped we also carry neoprene socks with or without soles for kayaks so tight no bootie can be worn in them.