Contact Lenses vs Glasses

I want to take up some water sports, and thought that having a pair of contact lenses would be much better than dealing with wet glasses (and the possibility of them falling off....)

Unfortunately, when I tried some contact lenses, it didn't go so well. My first pair was quite poor all over the place. Close, small text, like on my mobile, was just about legible. In the distance, it was visually much poorer than my glasses. The annoying part was the need to constantly blink to have the contacts rest in a good place, else I'd get like, one eye out of focus. On the flip side, I can see more or less everything just not as sharp as my glasses.

Speaking with another optometrist from the shop, I was given a 2nd eye test, and increased by a quarter of a diopter, and sent home with a new set of trial lenses. I definitely got improved visual acuity in the distance, but it was now nigh impossible to read the text on my phone, short of having it stretched out in my arm, and the text, while visible, was too small to read for long periods of time (like kindle).

I was then explained that with contacts, they are more optimized for one particular range, unless I went for bifocal lenses.

By this time, I was really sick of it floundering about with having sight that was just on the verge of being blurry, versus not being able to focus on things close by.  I was told "the vision improves after a few days". From my experience, I didn't get any significant improvement after 5 days of trying out the trial pairs.

Here's a hint: I bought a pack of contacts from the optometrist after I had my eyes checked. BAD IDEA. If possible, ask them for trial pairs ONLY, to see if contacts really are your thing, and if they work for you. Don't buy a whole friggin' 90 days worth disposable of contacts. After trying out the 2nd set of trial lenses, it obviously won't work for me as I want my sight optimized for both near and far, not one or the other.

It was only then, they explained that glasses are good for that, contact lenses, not so good. And, the best part, I couldn't return the unopened lenses. Bit annoyed, but it can't be helped. In any case, I got them to exchange lenses that matched my sibling's prescription, so all's good. They did an amazing (if expensive) job on my glasses though.