Back to the Future: Why your next foulies may feel worse before they get better

The 1981 Admrial’s Cup and Fastnet started light and ended becalmed, which is the worst order to take them in. We were a Two Tonner out of Lymington, Sapphire , John Bassett’s boat. He has owned Solent Oyster a super competitive Stephen Jones design which we won regularl in 1979 and finished the Fastnet successfully. John the went for a US designed 2 tonner designed by Doug Peterson along the lines of the fabulously successful Serendipity 43 called Louisiana Crude.

I was up forward on the mast, which on that boat meant you met every sea before anyone aft had finished deciding it was coming. The first night came in wet and lumpy, the kind that has you on the rail for hours doing the cold arithmetic of a long race: too far in to be comfortable, too far out to be warm.

I was wearing Line 7, white, two coloured lines down the front, the New Zealand kit half the fleet coveted and the best money could then buy. Within two seasons it would dress the Australian crew that finally prised the America’s Cup out of American hands; in 1981 it was simply what you wanted on your back. It kept the green water out, which was the whole of its ambition. What it did not do was let anything out the other way. By the small hours I was sealed inside it, stewing in my own sweat, wrists and boot-tops taped against a sea that kept finding its way in regardless. Waterproof, yes. Comfortable, never. The fabric had exactly one trick and it performed it relentlessly in both directions. “Waterproof, yes. Comfortable, never. The fabric had exactly one trick and it performed it relentlessly in both directions.”

Then the breeze went soft, and the race that had tried to beat us up spent its last day refusing to let us finish it. We came into Plymouth wrung out wet through sweat, salt-stung, and too tired to be pleased about it. Then it all moved on and although I can’t actually remember when I realised. What changed everything was a membrane, and what made the membrane work was a class of chemistry we are now in the process of banning. That chemistry is PFAS, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, the fluorine-based compounds nicknamed “forever chemicals” because they do not break down in nature. For half a century they were the quiet miracle inside your foulies, the thing that made fabric shrug off water and oil alike. This is the story worth telling, because the kit you buy in the next three years is going to be the most interesting it has been since Bob Gore stretched a length of PTFE in 1969 and accidentally invented the modern foulie.

The trick, and the catch Strip a modern offshore jacket back to first principles and there are two jobs being done by two different things, and most sailors conflate them. The membrane is the waterproof-breathable layer bonded inside the shell, riddled with pores too small for a water droplet to barge through but large enough for water vapour to escape. This is what today would have stopped us all boiling alive in our Line 7s. The second job belongs to the DWR, the durable water repellent , a microscopically thin treatment painted onto the outer face fabric. Its only purpose is to make the surface bead water so the face fabric does not soak through and “wet out”. When your jacket goes dark and heavy across the shoulders in a long beat to windward, that is not the membrane failing. That is the DWR giving up, the face fabric saturating, and your breathability collapsing because vapour cannot cross a waterlogged outer. Both of those things, the original membrane and the DWR, were built on and polyfluoroalkyl substances. PFAS. The forever chemicals. And they were used because, frankly, nothing else came close. The physics is unsentimental about it: DWR works by lowering the surface energy of the fabric so water cannot spread, and fluorinated chemistry was exceptionally good at lowering surface energy. It also, crucially, repelled oil. A fluorinated finish shrugged off sunblock, diesel film, winch grease and the general filth of a working deck. That oil resistance is the bit everyone is about to miss, and we will come back to it because it is the crux of the whole offshore problem.

Why it is ending, and the dates that actually bite The case for removing PFAS from non-essential consumer use is now overwhelming. They persist, they move, they accumulate, and the health literature has become too large for regulators to ignore. But for a sailor the immediate question is not toxicology. It is what happens to the kit when the chemistry changes, and the calendar has finally got specific. There is no single ban day. Instead a wall of deadlines is converging from several directions at once. The EU’s PFHxA restriction under REACH, a specific sub-group of PFAS, starts applying from October 2026 with transitional periods running between eighteen months and five years, and it reaches textile water-repellent treatments directly. Sitting behind it is the much larger universal PFAS restriction proposed by Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. That one is still being fought over, not yet settled: the European Chemicals Agency published its socio-economic committee’s draft opinion in March 2026 and ran a public consultation on it into May, with final opinions due to the Commission by the end of 2026 before any legal text is drafted. So be clear about the distinction. The direction of travel is settled. The exact legal landing point is still being argued, sector by sector, with derogations and transition periods very much in play. The practical message is simpler than the chemistry. Old fluorinated fabrics can test in the hundreds or thousands of parts per million for fluorine markers, and the new rules increasingly treat that as evidence of a substance class the industry is being forced to remove. The exact thresholds and test methods vary by jurisdiction and by whether a regulator is measuring intentionally added PFAS, a named compound, or total organic fluorine. The numbers move. The direction does not. Denmark has already gone first, with a national ban on PFAS in consumer clothing and footwear taking effect July 2026 and a sell-through grace period into the following January. The UK published its first national PFAS plan in February 2026 with retail squarely in the crosshairs. And in the United States, California and New York have done the heavy lifting for everyone, because those two markets are large enough that a brand which loses them loses the argument. By the end of 2026, nearly every major outdoor brand selling into America had phased the chemicals out. The industry is not waiting to be told twice.

The membrane problem is solved. The DWR problem is not. Here is the technical point that most of the coverage misses, and it is the one that matters if you are spending your own money. The two jobs did not turn out to be equally hard to fix. The membrane was the easier one, and it is far closer to solved than the face-fabric problem. Gore replaced its fluorinated ePTFE with expanded polyethylene, ePE, and by its own account the hard part was never the membrane. Gore describes ePE as lighter, thinner, strong, made without intentionally added PFAS, and lower in carbon footprint through the laminate, though it qualifies that with the usual language about trace amounts and laminate choice. The point for a sailor is that it tests to the same waterproof-breathable standard as the stuff it replaced, which is why your next Musto, your next Cup-team replica, your next anything-with-a-membrane is quietly switching over without much drama. Musto’s new LPX inshore line for 2026, for instance, is built on Gore-Tex ePE. The membrane is not where you will feel the change. The DWR is where the bodies are buried. Strip the fluorine out of the surface treatment and two things degrade at once. First, durability. A fluorinated finish penetrated and bound deep into the fibre and lasted through abrasion and repeated washing. The fluorine-free replacements sit more shallowly, give up their water repellency sooner, and need reactivating and reproofing far more often to keep working. Second, and this is the offshore killer, they have no meaningful oil repellency at all. There is no oleophobic barrier without fluorine. Nobody has cracked that yet at production scale. Now think about what actually lands on a racing crew across a Fastnet. Sunblock smeared up the forearms. The oily sheen off a wet non-slip deck. Diesel film from the day’s motoring. Grease flicked off a loaded winch. Every one of those contaminants now soaks straight into the face fabric, raises its surface energy, and kills the water beading in exactly the spots that take the most spray. Your shoulders and forearms wet out first, your breathability dies locally, and you are back, in a small but real way, towards the clammy misery of that 1981 night on the rail. Gore now says it plainly in its own care guidance: the PFAS-free DWR is less resistant to oils and needs more regular maintenance. There is no oleophobic barrier without fluorine. The buy-it-once-and-forget-it foulie is finished. So the new norm comes with a behavioural change that the marketing departments are very quiet about. The buy-it-once-and-forget-it foulie is finished. Reproofing moves from something you did once a season to routine kit husbandry. Technical wash, heat reactivation in a tumble dryer or under an iron, periodic re-energising with a spray-on or wash-in product. The chemistry got cleaner and the maintenance burden moved onto your shoulders, literally.

What is coming to close the gap This is a transitional moment, not a dead end, and the replacement chemistries are worth knowing by name because this is where the brands will fight for differentiation. The near-term answers are silicone and wax. Schoeller’s ecorepel, for instance, is a biodegradable paraffin-wax finish that spirals a thin film around each individual fibre, inspired by the waxy cuticle on a leaf and the natural oils in animal fur. It beads water well in light to moderate conditions, reactivates with heat, and is breathability-neutral. Its honest limitation is the same as all of them: lower abrasion durability than fluorine, and no oil barrier. Maybe the British company Barbour still has a role? The interesting horizon is silicone in cleverer forms. There is credible talk of a genuine PFAS-free oil-repellent finish based on hyperbranched polysiloxanes reaching commercial reality as early as 2026, and the Swiss federal lab EMPA has demonstrated a plasma-deposited siloxane coating, a silicone-like film just thirty nanometres thick, that makes fabric extremely hydrophobic. Whoever gets a durable, oil-shedding, fluorine-free finish to work at ocean grade wins the offshore segment outright, because right now the honest truth is that nobody has, and the better brands are admitting it. What the sharp end is actually wearing And this is where it gets genuinely interesting, because the foiling generation has quietly solved the problem by refusing to play the same game.

Watch an AC75 or an F50 and ask how much green water actually lands on the crew. Far less than you would think, and what does land arrives as high-speed spray, not as a boarding sea. That single fact rewrites the brief. The old offshore foulie existed to shelter the sailor from the ocean for days at a time. On a foiler the sailor barely meets the ocean, so the clothing stops being a survival shell and becomes something closer to a race suit, cut for speed, movement and impact rather than absolute waterproofing. The direction is visible right across the top of the sport. Cup teams, SailGP crews and the brands that supply them have all moved toward tighter, lower-drag, impact-protected kit, because at forty knots through a tack the sailor’s own body is a control surface and a flapping jacket is a penalty. Helly Hansen’s Foil X range, developed with an America’s Cup programme, is one public example of exactly that thinking reaching the rest of us. Head and chest impact protection and aerodynamic cleanliness now matter more than the ability to sit in a waterfall for a week. The IMOCA and Ultim solo fleet has split the same way, for a different reason, and it makes the underlying idea explicit: on these boats the vessel has become part of the clothing system. The modern Vendée Globe boat has an enclosed cockpit. The skipper spends most of the Southern Ocean inside it, not standing in it taking the full weight of the sea. The boat now does the sheltering the jacket used to do.

That changed the design priorities so completely that when Musto built the MPX Impact for the likes of Armel Le Cléac’h and Will Harris, they abandoned the traditional tight rubber neck seal of an ocean smock in favour of a quick-fasten collar. Marginally less waterproof if a wave catches you wrong, far quicker to throw on for a dash on deck. They even stripped the Cordura reinforcing out of the matching trousers to save weight and bulk, a decision that would have been heresy in the era when you expected to be sitting in a waterfall for a week. The protection that matters now is D3O impact padding on elbows, hips and knees, because the thing most likely to hurt you on a foiling IMOCA doing thirty knots into a wave is the boat, not the cold. Then look at the crewed round-the-world and high-latitude end, the people who are still genuinely exposed for weeks, and the priorities flip straight back. Rubicon 3’s skippers in Iceland and the high south talk about durability above all, kit that survives months of being dragged across abrasive non-slip and snagged on deck gear without developing the leaks that finish cheaper gear in a few months. That is the segment where the PFAS exemptions for severe-wet-condition gear were specifically written, and it is no accident. It is the hardest place to remove fluorine and the slowest to give it up. Helly Hansen, the most transparent of the sailing brands, admits openly that a small number of its offshore and buoyancy products still carry intentionally added PFAS under regulatory exemption, and where they do, they will wear a “Made with PFAS chemicals” label. That label is the most honest sentence in the entire industry right now, and it tells you exactly where the technical frontier sits: at the very top of the ocean range, where the chemistry still cannot be beaten. That label is the most honest sentence in the entire industry right now. It tells you exactly where the chemistry still cannot be beaten.

Where this leaves the rest of us For inshore and coastal kit, the sub-£200 jacket most of us actually buy, PFAS-free is already the default and it works perfectly well. The demands are lower, the oil exposure is manageable, and the only thing you really need to absorb is that you now own the maintenance. Wash it properly with a technical cleaner, never ordinary detergent, reactivate the DWR with heat, and reproof it when the water stops beading instead of pretending it will last forever. For genuine offshore racing kit, the honest picture for the next few years is a compromise you should buy with your eyes open. Equivalent waterproofing, a real step down in oil repellency and finish longevity, the longest regulatory runway of any apparel category, and disclosure labels on the handful of fluorinated holdouts at the very top. It is not as good as the old chemistry yet, in the specific ways that matter on a working deck. But it is getting there, and the boat you sail will increasingly decide which compromise you even have to make. The foilers have engineered their way around the problem by keeping the sea off the crew in the first place. The rest of us are still out in it, reproofing our shoulders, waiting for someone to teach silicone the one trick fluorine made look easy. My old Line 7 kept the sea out and made me miserable. The membrane fixed the misery. The forever chemicals made the membrane practical. We are now unpicking the third of those without losing the first two, and for the first time in half a century the answer is not settled. That is precisely what makes it worth watching. The deck-level answer Strip all of it back to what you actually do on Monday, and it comes down to five rules. Buy for the sailing you actually do, not the marketing photograph. A thousand-pound ocean shell is the wrong tool for a crew that races coastal and offshore in summer. Expect PFAS-free DWR to need more maintenance than the kit it replaced. This is not a fault to complain about. It is the new normal, and it is designed in. Keep oil, sunblock and diesel off the shoulders and forearms wherever you can. That is exactly where the new finishes are weakest and exactly where the spray lands hardest. Wash technical kit more, not less. Salt, sweat and oil are not badges of honour, they are the things actively killing your water repellency. Technical wash, never household detergent, then heat to reactivate. Carry one properly dry below-decks layer and guard it. That is seamanship, not comfort-seeking, and it has not changed in fifty years. The chemistry is changing. The sea is not. So the sailor has to get smarter. Appendix: The 600-Mile Kit List

A 600-mile race is long enough to give you everything. You will start in a building breeze and rain, get a cold front through on the second night that has you shaking on the rail, and then sail into a windless, humid high where the deck is an oven and the only enemy is sunburn and your own boredom. Pack for one of those conditions and you will suffer in the other two. The art is layering, not bulk, and ruthless discipline about keeping one set of dry clothes that never, under any circumstances, gets worn on deck. What follows is how I’d kit out for it, from skin out, with brands worth considering at three budget levels. Everything is post-PFAS where it sensibly can be, which after the article above you’ll understand why. The layering principle Three jobs, three layers, and they must work as a system. Next-to-skin wicks the sweat off you. The mid-layer traps warm air and keeps wicking. The shell stops the wind and the sea. Cotton appears nowhere on this list above the waist, because wet cotton kills warmth and never dries at sea. Synthetic or merino throughout. The trick for a 600-miler is carrying enough range that you can run shell-over-baselayer in the heat and shell-over-baselayer-over-midlayer-over-heavy-baselayer on the cold night, without ever needing a fourth bulky thing you can’t move in. The 600-mile kit system, from skin out A note on budget tiers throughout: Smart is the sensible-money choice that does the job. Serious is what a committed offshore crew member buys. Sharp end is what you’d spend if budget were no object and you were doing this for a living. Prices are ballpark mid-2026 UK retail and move around, so treat them as proportions, not quotes. Model names and prices drift every season, so check current catalogues before you commit. Skin layer (the bit that matters most, spend here) Synthetic or merino underwear, two to three pairs. Merino resists stink on day three when synthetic is unbearable. Smart: Decathlon Tribord merino. Serious: Icebreaker / Finisterre. Sharp end: merino from Zhik or Helly Hansen LIFA Merino. A technical wicking sports bra where needed, two. Often overlooked and worth real money; a non-wicking cotton bra is three days of misery. Serious: Finisterre, Patagonia, dedicated active brands. Long-sleeve base layer, one lightweight for the heat and one mid-weight for the cold. LIFA is the benchmark here for a reason: Helly Hansen’s LIFA fibre moves moisture and dries fast. Smart: Decathlon Tribord. Serious: Helly Hansen LIFA Active. Sharp end: Helly Hansen LIFA Merino, Zhik base layers. Lightweight long johns, one pair, for the cold night watch. Same brands. Mid layer Technical fleece or grid-fleece midlayer, one. Polartec grid fleece is the gold standard for warmth-to-weight and breathability. Smart: Decathlon. Serious: Helly Hansen / Gill OS fleece. Sharp end: Musto or Zhik high-loft technical midlayer. Lightweight synthetic insulated gilet or “active” jacket, one, for the genuinely cold pre-dawn hours. A PrimaLoft-filled vest that packs to nothing. Serious: Gill / Helly Hansen. Sharp end: Musto Primaloft. Shell (the foul-weather gear from the article) Offshore jacket and salopettes. For a varied 600-miler, ocean-grade is overkill weight; a strong coastal-offshore set is the sweet spot. Smart: Gill OS2/OS3, or Decathlon Tribord 900 if budget is tight. Serious: Helly Hansen Aegir or Musto BR2. Sharp end: Musto MPX or LPX, North Sails Performance, Zhik OFS900. Salopettes, not trousers, always offshore. The high back is what keeps the sea out of your kidneys when you sit in a wave. A drop-seat design is worth hunting for; the alternative is a genuine ordeal on a heeled boat in full kit. Extremities (where races are won and lost on morale) Sailing boots, one pair, properly fitted over one thick sock. Smart: Gill Tall Yachting boot. Serious: Dubarry Ultima (leather, warm, expensive, last for years). Sharp end: Dubarry or Zhik ZKG. Sailing socks, three pairs minimum, merino. Wet feet are inevitable; cold wet feet are a choice. Gloves, two types. A pair of short-finger sailing gloves for grip and rope work in the warm (Gill / Zhik / Musto all fine), and crucially a pair of waterproof winter sailing gloves for the cold wet night, where most people get this wrong and freeze. Serious: Zhik or Gill three-season. Sharp end: a neoprene or Gore-Tex offshore glove. Carry a spare dry pair sealed in a bag. A merino or fleece beanie that fits under a hood, one. Cheap, vital. A brimmed sun hat with a retaining cord for the windless oven day, one. Heatstroke is a genuine offshore risk and unglamorous. Buff or neck tube, two. Sun protection by day, draught-stopper by night. The single best value item on this entire list. Sunglasses with a leash, polarised, plus a cheap backup pair. Safety: lifejacket and harness (do not cheap out here) Start with the race, not the catalogue. Check the race category and the Notice of Race, which point you at the World Sailing Offshore Special Regulations and any RORC prescriptions, and let those set your minimum specification rather than guessing. Then buy a properly fitted inflatable lifejacket with integral harness, crotch strap, light, sprayhood where required, and space for AIS and PLB fitment. The market leader for serious offshore crew is Spinlock. The Deckvest 6D (Pro Sensor) and the VITO (Hammar hydrostatic, developed off the Volvo Ocean Race jacket) are the two to look at, roughly £380–430. The older 5D is still excellent and often discounted. The Deckvest LITE+ sits below at around £240–275 if budget is tight. Smart alternative: Crewsaver Ergofit, which notably has room inside the cover for a PLB. Fit matters as much as the model. The shoulder-fit system should put the weight on your shoulders, not your neck, and the crotch strap is non-negotiable, because without one the jacket rides up over your face in the water. An uncomfortable lifejacket is one you are tempted to take off, which makes comfort a safety feature, not a luxury. Consider the Spinlock HRS (Harness Release System) if your boat uses side-deck jacklines, so you can release from a dragging situation. Add a personal AIS beacon (Ocean Signal MOB1 is the standard) and ideally a separate PLB . Check your chosen jacket has room for both around the inflation tube before you buy, a real-world gotcha. Personal tether with a quick-release at the chest end, two clips. Plus a serviceable knife, a whistle, and a light on the jacket.

Below decks Sleeping bag rated to the conditions but never bulky. For a summer 600-miler a lightweight synthetic bag beats down, because down is useless once damp and everything below is damp. A two-season synthetic mummy bag, or a dedicated marine bag with a water-resistant shell. Many crews run a liner alone on the warm legs and the full bag when it turns cold. Inflatable pillow, or a stuff sack of dry clothes. One sacred set of dry below-decks kit: leggings, long-sleeve top, dry socks, sealed in a dry bag and worn only off-watch. This set is the difference between a recoverable night and a miserable one. Guard it with your life. Microfibre travel towel, packs small, dries fast, Tooth brush and paste, anti-persperant, deodarant, seasick remedy, spare glasses, sunscreen. Fit notes that matter The list above is the system. This is where real bodies and real budgets change the answer, and getting it wrong is not a comfort issue, it is a safety one. If the gear does not fit, people stop wearing it properly, and a lifejacket left unclipped or a hood that won’t seal is a hazard, not a preference. Women’s fit. Offshore kit cut on a man’s frame and shrunk puts the reinforced knee and seat patches in the wrong place and hides the pockets behind the lifejacket. Buy a women’s-specific cut, not a small men’s. Helly Hansen has long made proper women’s salopettes; Zhik’s OFS700 is well regarded; Gill and Musto both now do real women’s offshore lines. Look hard for a drop-seat salopette. Smaller-frame sailors. The enemy is gear that drowns you: sleeves over the hands ruin glove grip, an oversized hood won’t seal, and a loose lifejacket rides up. Prioritise adjustment range and the smallest competent size over buying big “to be safe.” Larger-frame sailors. Demand real sizing, not an “XXL” that just means slightly longer arms. Check the lifejacket buoyancy and strap range genuinely fit; a 275N jacket can be the better call for larger users or anyone carrying tools, and check the harness webbing actually closes comfortably over full layers. Older sailors. Warmth, dexterity and ease of movement are safety features at this end, not vanities. Favour kit that is easy to don and doff in the dark, lifejackets with simple clear fastenings, and gloves that keep dexterity rather than maximum bulk. I write this as a man who has done a few Fastnets and feels the cold night watch more than he used to. Sensory-sensitive crew. A scratchy neck seal, a tight hood, or a badly fitting lifejacket that someone quietly cannot stand to wear is a genuine safety problem, because the kit only works when it is actually on. Trying gear on properly and at length, rather than buying blind online, solves most of this. Crew on a budget. Safety kit first, expensive logo later. A sound lifejacket, good base layers and dry feet beat a thousand-pound shell worn over cold cotton every single time. The buyer’s decision box If you mostly sail inshore or coastal: buy PFAS-free, maintain it properly, and spend the saved money on layers and boots. If you race offshore regularly: buy better construction, not just a better badge. Look at hood and collar design, cuff seals, seat and knee reinforcement, salopette back height, pocket access under a lifejacket, and whether the thing can be repaired. If you do 600-mile races: carry one sacred dry set below, waterproof gloves, spare socks, and a reproofing routine done before the race, not after it fails. If you do serious cold-water or high-latitude work: do not let environmental branding talk you into under-specced kit. Durability and exposure protection still matter most, and this is exactly the segment where the regulations still allow the hardest-wearing chemistry. The honest priority order, if money is finite Spend in this order and you’ll never regret it. First, the lifejacket and its beacons, because it’s the one piece whose failure mode is fatal. Second, base layers , because they do more for your comfort across a 600-mile range than anything else and they’re cheap relative to the shell. Third, boots and socks , because cold wet feet wreck morale and footing. Only then the shell , where, as the article above explains, the clever move in 2026 is to buy a strong PFAS-free coastal-offshore set, learn to reproof it properly, and put the saved money into the layers and safety kit that actually keep you racing. A thousand-pound Gore-Tex Pro jacket over a cotton T-shirt and cold feet is a fool’s kit list. Get the system right and the cheapest competent shell in the world will see you round. The forever chemicals are leaving the deck. The seamanship of staying warm, dry and alive is not going anywhere.