How can I monitor my heart rate while kayaking on Apple Watch?

I want to monitor my heart rate while sea kayaking. I wear a dry suit with latex wrist gaskets so my watch can't be in contact with my skin. OK, so I bought a Polar H9 chest strap and paired it with my watch and that works.

My problem is that when my watch is strapped on top of my latex gasket it does not detect my wrist. Having not detected my wrist, it locks. When locked, I can't see my current heart rate. I must enter the passcode and navigate to my work out app. This is unworkable - I need to be able to just glance at my heart rate while paddling.

I know this has to do with wrist detection. I don't think that turning off wrist detection is a workable solution. That disables many things, including the passcode. I would want to re-enable wrist detection after my work out. I think this will be too much bother.

Is there another solution to this?

[Re-Titled by Moderator]