Sperry Men’s Avenue Duck Boot

An Amazon search for sailing boots presented these, which I failed to notice weren’t specifically marketed as deck boots. This review is based on 4 days (~40 hours) sailing experience:

The good: 1. The soles were sufficiently stiff to protect feet when climbing narrow, fold out mast ladders (much better than deck shoes). 2. Size 11 seemed slightly long and slightly narrow compared to may shoes and boots, but acceptable. 3. Probably okay for gardening.

The bad: 1. The on wet textured decks they have noticeably less grip than good deck shoes with razor cut soles, and on smooth wet surfaces they’re positively dangerous. I couldn’t trust them on a pitching, wet deck. 2. The texture in the soles is molded in and shallow, as opposed to more deeply cut, so with wear one can expect them to rapidly get worse on wet surfaces. 3. The insole is not removable and adding another on top would make the toe area too shallow, so changing insoles won’t help with drying and odor control. 4. The following likely is true of any rubber bottom boot, which can’t breath, so not a fault of these specifically: after each day’s wear the interior at the toe end was wet and with condensed moisture, requiring drying with a cloth and treating with medicated foot powder to prevent odors, but with rubber bottoms this probably goes with the territory.

Am annoyed with Amazon’s return policy – they looked okay when received but after giving them 4 days of honest evaluation on a cruise they’re no longer unworn and smell of foot powder, though it would be hard to tell by looking. I guess it’s off to Goodwill with them, or keep in the car emergencies.

I was so excited to order these boots and wear them in the “Chicago-slush”. These were not my snow boots or boots for plowing; only boots to be worn when it was slushy and very wet out. On the FIRST day, one of the shoes got a hairline crack across the top where the boots “bends” where you walk. I asked to return them, and was informed that they need to be in the same/new/unused condition as when I bought them. That’s not possible. They cracked after one use. Also, they are EXTREMELY narrow and tight. The picture is what happened to my foot after wearing them 2 days in a row. I never wore them again. I asked to return them since they were defective and got no response.

Update:
Changing my review to the lowest possible rating after using these in the snow. They somehow seemed to leak through the toe almost immediately resulting in miserably cold wet feet.
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The Sperry Avenue Duck Boot is stylish, unique, light weight, and seems to be well built. Functionally, it falls short in a major way.

Sperry is known for making shoes with exceptional traction and grip in wet environments. For me, this is an expectation of any quality rain boot.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for the Avenue Duck Boot. After testing them throughout 2 rainy days I found them to be extremely slippery on all but the roughest of surfaces, and I almost took a few spills upon entering buildings.

While the wave design of the soles looks pretty cool, I believe it to be the culprit. Unlike Sperry’s classic flat-soled boat shoe, the soles of this boot provide very little surface area to contact the ground below. Fundamentally, smaller surface areas produce less traction and I believe this is why these boots are SLIPPERY when wet, or on wet surfaces.

For this reason, I cannot recommend the Sperry Top-Sider Avenue Duck Boot for use in rain or snow.