stitch and glue

colors for visibility

Which colors show up best on the sea if you want to be seen? When I first bought a sea kayak my mentors said it was important to be visible and that the most visible colors lay in the red-orange-yellow range of the spectrum. I chose orange because that was right in the middle and ordered the kayak with orange deck and orange hull. I later decided I didn't really like looking at orange all day! Hence the next choice, still in the same range; a yellow deck with a red hull. But research shows that these colors while bright don't necessarily show up best. Red becomes less obvious in certain light...
White on the other hand reflects light so well it ought to be incredibly visible... except maybe when there are a lot of whitecaps out there? And black? Fishermen often find that black floats and black flags are easier to spot than brightly colored ones, especially when seen against the light...
Yet it's the unlikely "robin-egg blue" that surprises most paddlers. Because it contrasts sharply against most sea kayaking backgrounds it too is highly visible.
Of course big blocks of a single color show up better than broken shapes, hence the smaller blocks of color that effectively break up the outlines and camouflage war ships...
But when I spot a kayaker in the distance, it is often the movement of the paddle that catches my eye first, sometimes long before I can make out the kayak. For all the color you can add to the kayak, moving a paddle in the air is more likely to attract attention.