Tough Clothes for Tough People.
The bow dips so far into the sea that a tide of ocean spills across the entire deck. At the exact same moment a twenty-foot white water wall crashes down on top of you so hard that you slide into a thousand pounds of fish listing starboard at an almost unnatural angle. Amazingly, when you finally stagger to your feet – you’re alive and dry!
Scenes like this have riveted “Deadliest Catch” audiences now for 5 seasons, as we have grown to know the characters that make this their job, the dangers they face every time they ship out, and the gear they have come to rely on to keep them alive.
Grundens, which has been producing commercial rain gear since the 1920’s, is probably best known as the supplier to not just the Discovery channel show, but the entire industry as well. But long gone are the days when Grundens would dip canvas into barrels of boiled linseed oil until saturated, and hang them up to dry at room temperature for fourteen days in order to make their hats, rain coats and rain pants.
“It’s not like it used to be, lets just say that!” commented Del Deide, President and CEO of Americanworkwear.us, an online retailer known for its robust assortment of rain gear from Grundens, Helly Hansen, Carhartt and others. “The fabrics and construction of our commercial rain wear brands are made to withstand jobs and abuse most of us would only have nightmares about!”
To do this, today’s rain clothes incorporate nearly space age advances in fabric and manufacturing. Helly Hansen’s HellyTech process is a good example: super strong base fabrics are constructed with a layering micro-thin layer of modern polymer film on reverse sides of the fabric, which allows moisture to release while working, but the pores are too small for water molecules to penetrate from the harsh outside weather.
And harsh it is! But as long as Grundens, Helly Hansen and other industry leaders build products that can live up keeping the men and women who live like we see on shows like the “Deadliest Catch” safe and dry, we’ll see more and more advances, quality and value in the gear we wear for just a rainy day fishing - or on a much less dangerous job.
