Be afraid, be very afraid!
Published February 18, 2008 | 
How many tragic stories start out with something like, “It was a beautiful, warm, sunny morning. . .”?
As coaches we teach students all the gear they need, and all the rescues they should know. Just in case. I wonder sometimes if by doing this we don’t spend enough time on the “just in case”. The truth we know is that all the gear in the world won’t save you from you. Flairs are worthless if they can’t be seen. VHF radios are paperweights if there is no one to hear. There is a stark reality to nature. Knowing this truth somewhere down in the pit of your stomach is essential to good judgment. I think sometimes we have to be careful when we teach safety, not to gloss over what we are being safe from.
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3 Responses to Be afraid, be very afraid!
Every now & then I will hear somebody refer to big, fat, superstable sitatops as ‘idiotproof’.
My usual response is,
“There is no such thing as an idiotproof boat”.
I think SOT’s have a record for being the most dangerous, not because they are inherently dangerous, but because the people who tend to be paddling them don’t have an understanding of paddle safety.
A couple years back, at a Jamaica Bay Kayak fishing tournament, we had sevral people go over all around the Bay. Most were not able to get back on their boats and were not dressed for the water. The water was still cold and a lot of us were performing rescues and towing people to shore. One person capsized three times.
Many were suffering from the begining stages of hypothermia.
Only the SOT kayaks were capsizing as they are prone to capsize when broached. The waves that day were just big enough, but we didn’t have a singe sit-inside-kayak issue.
Many peope were shocked and said the same thing “I thought sit-on-tops were supposed to be stable?”
People were traumatized and I heard a few people say that they were never going to go kayak fishing again.
There was a similar eye-opener a few years back – there was a big flotilla, all KINDS of boats, set up to draw attention to Governor’s Island back when things were still a little up in the air (I think the city agreed to buy it a week before the flotilla but we went out anyways. There was a big cold front that was supposed to come through right in the middle of the proceedings but a bunch of less-experienced people went out from one of the community boating groups, all on sitatops. Fortunately it was guided – when the first blast hit half those folks went over & the guides were busy putting them back on their boats.
Now in that case, they probably would’ve gotten knocked over in decked boats and that would have been even worse – but again, a situation where the ease of the sitatop worked just well enough to get a bunch of less experienced people out into a situation where it was easy to see that things might get challenging.
I had originally been thinking about joining that group (would’ve been one of the guides) but I’d been watching the forecast & when I got asked to crew on a big motor vessel I actually jumped at the chance – I’d been less than comfortable with what I was seeing on the forecast & had been on the fence about joining the kayakers.
Everybody got home safe – most of the kayakers actually took the path of least resistance, most went to Red Hook & pulled out there, only a couple of the strongest paddlers made their way back to the Hudson River Park.
Pretty exciting day on the harbor, though. Even the party boat I was on was feeling it – but boy, as I was standing on the bow watching a Floating the Apple gig rowing their hearts out & moving at a crawl, I was happy to be right where I was!
That’s actually one of the specific incidents I think about when I get curmudgeonly about there not being any such thing as an idiot-proof boat.