How to Choose Personal Equipment for Your Boat?

Equip yourself with the right boat essentials for a safe and comfortable trip. Explore tips on safety gear, staying warm and dry, choosing waterproofs, and finding affordable boating equipment.

Like all sports, yachting has its own iconic brands of clothing and equipment and it is tempting to want to go to a chandlery and choose the best new gear. However, this is not an option for the budget sailor who will be looking for cheap bargains.

Safety equipment

Penny pinching does not apply to Safety Equipment for Safeguarding Life at Seapersonal safety equipment such as life-jackets, harnesses and tethers. Safety gear must be of the highest quality; it must be able to do its job with a wide margin to spare and tough enough to survive the abuse that comes with life aboard a small boat.

You may never need any of this equipment, but if you do then its job is to keep you and your crew alive to sail another day. At such times it is a bargain, whatever it costs. Consider investing in professional-quality equipment. Incredibly, safety lights, crotch straps and sprayhoods are extras on some leisure lifejackets.

There should be an exposure suit for everyone aboard. One-use suits are cheap but they appear to be made from the same material as polythene shopping bags and probably last as long. This is possibly doing them a disservice, but liferafts are a harsh environment and investing in a better-made, stronger exposure suit may give you the edge you need to survive. It is amazing how quickly water pours through the smallest rip in an exposure suit, rendering it useless.

Keeping warm

Keeping warm depends on keeping out the wind and putting as many layers of air as possible between you and the outside world when you venture into the cockpit or on deck. As the temperature rises, you can take layers off and as it falls they go back on.

Layers come in three types and each does a particular job. There is a base layer to wick away perspiration and keep your skin dry. Next comes the mid-layer which is intended to keep you warm, and finally there is the top layer which aims to keep out the wind and wet.

You can wear top branded clothing from the skin outwards but there is no evidence that lesser-known, cheaper brands perform any less well for a fraction of the price. Many shops, not just sailing outlets, sell thermal clothing. A top-of-the-range windproof fleece can cost ten times that of a lesser-known brand. A woollen jersey or bobble hat does the same job whatever its logo.

Most sailing shoes claim to have soles that stick to waterfalls. In the real world the deck, not your shoes, should be non-slip so that you are safe whatever your footwear. The only requirement for a pair of deck shoes is that they are comfortable and do not mark, scuff or chip the deck.

Keeping dry

It is obvious that waterproofs should keep you dry. But how dry? Complete dryness means stopping rain and spray coming in and letting perspiration out. Materials for keeping water out have been around for decades but we had to wait until the 1980s before breathable fabrics arrived which let perspiration out.

This was a godsend to anyone involved in vigorous physical activity. For the first time, keeping out rain and spray did not mean living in a sweaty dampness that chilled you the instant you stopped jumping around.

As always, there is a catch. Just like the cheapest non-breathable oilies, a set of top quality breathable waterproof jacket and trousers will still leak, creating a slowly growing damp spot that spreads from your neck, around your chest, across your back and then downwards to your toes, because seals, if fitted, are never perfect and stretch, crack and curl as they age, allowing water in. Seawater does not behave like perspiration and disappear through the breathable membrane, leaving you warm and dry.

If you go overboard wearing separate oilskin jacket and trousers you are soaked to the skin within seconds of hitting the water. Good seals slow down the exchange of water warmed by your body heat with cold sea water but the heat loss is relentless. If it is important that you stay dry or if there is a real risk of falling into the water (open boats and dinghy sailors are at particular risk, then the answer is a breathable dry suit with proper waterproof seals. It costs about a third of the price of top brand water proofs and keeps you warm much longer if you unexpectedly find yourself in the water.

How often do you need waterproofs?

Adverts for waterproofs claim that they offer “day long comfort” or contain statements saying that anyone offshore sailing needs “full storm protection, because they are on deck for extended periods of time”. But it has been estimated that about a third of all boats never or rarely leave their berths. This does not prevent their owners stepping aboard dressed to survive the ultimate storm.

The rest of us tend to go to sea in good weather during the summer months. The number of occasions we encounter weather so bad that it justifies kitting up probably does not reach double figures each year, and then each occasion lasts for no more than a few hours. Waterproofs are worn mostly as windbreakers or as maritime Macintoshes in rain showers, not to ward off seas breaking over the boat.

Think hard and realistically about what you expect from your oilskins and do not buy anything above those requirements.

Sourcing personal and other equipment

Finding the right equipment means:

1. Specifying what you expect an item of equipment to do.
2. How well you expect it to perform.

So look for kit that meets your standards. Buying the best kit for the job is not the same as buying the most expensive and the best source may not be a yacht chandlery.

Yacht chandlers

Most yachting chandlers offer a range of different-quality waterproofs which can be classed as: best, medium and budget quality or, stressing its nautical connections: ocean, offshore and inshore. The best costs twice or three times more than budget quality. Often the most obvious differences are the logos and lettering but the price variations can also reflect differences in specification, materials and methods of manufacture.

Whether the extra expenditure between best and budget is justified is a personal decision but rain and spray are equally wet wherever you are and some of the nastiest breaking seas you are ever likely to encounter are found in inshore waters. So, if it is good enough for inshore why not wear it offshore?

Read also: Cruising in Comfort on a Sailboat

Commercial chandlers. Fishermen want durable, practical foul weather gear. Their lives and livelihood depends upon their foul weather gear keeping them warm and dry, summer and winter. It must also withstand use and abuse far beyond that found on a yacht. It may not look fashionable but it will do the job and be much less expensive.

Mountaineering suppliers. Mountaineering equipment stores are worth checking out. Climbers take their foul weather gear into sub-zero blizzards and subject it to the most fearsome wear and tear. Yet top-quality mountaineering waterproofs cost about half that of sailing gear.

Motorcycle shops. For motorcyclists, a gentle shower turns into the driving spray we expect from a full-blown storm and they stay dry hour after hour. Modern bikers’ leathers are heavy-duty breathable fabrics that are abrasion resistant to a degree unimaginable in yachting oilskins for they must protect the wearer from road burn should they lose their wheels and slide along the road. Bikers’ gear looks out of place on a yacht but, like mountaineering gear, it costs about half the price of top-range yachting gear. Does usage and style alone explain the price difference?

Construction workers’ catalogues

Health and Safety rules lay down that workmen exposed to the elements wear suitable protective clothing, not just against the hazards of their work but against the weather. Thumb through the catalogue from any supplier of protective clothing to the construction trade and be surprised. Foul weather gear starts with base layers and travels outwards through shirts, pants and fleeces (normal and windproof), to breathable trousers and jackets.

It is sophisticated, smart, hardwearing and cheap. Workmen like high-visibility clothing and though their waterproofs may have few logos they are liberally striped with the retro-reflective material that most sailing gear restricts to hoods and, perhaps, cuffs.

Adding up the savings

You have to decide whether the price of top-quality clothing reflects a proportionate increase in durability and performance over cheaper gear or if you are just buying a logo.

Realistically, most of us settle for buying reasonable quality, durable personal gear which probably costs between a third to a half the price of Essential Yacht Equipment for Extended Cruisetop-range yachting equipment with no significant difference in performance. Hunt around and you may save as much as 60 per cent of the cost.