What’s the deal with water?

Hello fellow Vikings,

I just got the game about 2 months ago and I'm loving it so far! I've done a few of the bosses and I'm at the point of the game now where I'm itching to do more builds, and one of the things I wanted to work on is building a dock for my boats, since I'm going to have to cross the ocean for my next biome.

My question is; what's the deal with water? What was the thought process behind auto unequipping your items when your waist deep in water? I'm trying to build a dock literally only 2 foundations deep and I can't do it because if I get my knees wet I put away my hammer. Not to mention, if it doesn't quite hit the ground, my foundations won't clip to the foundations that are already attached to the dock.

I'm wondering if this is an issue that other people have as well. When you consider how much of the map is water and how the character is literally a viking, it's a bit weird that the game has things added in to make it impossible to do anything in water. I'm not talking about "difficult" I'm talking about literally if I'm in water I'm not allowed to build. I like difficult but putting a foundation on the ground shouldn't be a complicated puzzle.

There's already the wet debuff and going slower in water. What's the point in punishing you even further to the point that you're not allowed to use tools? Take away my weapons, sure, but why my tools? I'm not even dying, I'm just spending 15 minutes trying to get a single foundation in because of mechanics that they should have left out. I should be allowed to build a dock in my boat game