foggy lines
Published June 23, 2009 | 
Behind the guarded walls I used to go
Upon a summer wind theres a certain melody
Takes me back to the place that I know
Down on the beach
– chris rea
There are times when I know I’m much more cautious than most when it comes to taking new paddlers on the water. I realize too that people will sometimes follow almost anyone, anywhere. They trust that the guide is an “expert”. Besides sometimes it’s hard for a new paddler to distinguish the danger levels between a bass boat on the local lake and a kayak on open water. Many in fact never really grasp the concept of risk in the natural world at all. Not until they find themselves in deep, deep trouble anyway…
So as a coach or guide we have to be realistic about what our students can handle, not to mention what WE can handle. I think it’s all too easy sometimes for experienced paddlers to forget how quickly things can go wrong and to over estimate their ability to control the situation. I was thinking about that the other day when we drove up to Myer’s beach on Lake Superior. I was thinking about taking a quick tour of the mainland sea caves. When we arrived, one of the symposium tours was just coming off the water. They were literally appearing out of the fog. I stopped and talked to one of the coaches and found that they had had a great time out there… Navigation was a bit tricky…
It was a nice day after all. The air temperature was 85 just a couple miles inland. Here on the beach the air temp was 60f. The water was dead calm, but cold. One thing of note however was that tiny localized storms had been building and dissipating all day. We had been chased off the lake in the morning by one fast moving storm. For Mary just slipping off into the fog was not an easy decision so we decided to have a walk up the beach and consider it. Along the way we found another tour group coming out of the haze. This time it looked like a group with a local outfitter. Everyone was in doubles with low end gear. (Other than the guides of course). “All Doubles” is a sure sign of an unskilled sight-seeing (in the the fog) group. I wondered, “Would I want to take these folks out into the fog in the Apostles and be responsible for them?”.
In the end we decided to visit the caves another day. I don’t mind fog and I trust my navigation skills, in fact I’ve been to the mainland caves a couple of times and it’s not like you need much navigation experience to find them from Meyer’s Beach. (Just go east!) However it would not have been enjoyable for Mary to deal with the clapotis and noise around the cliffs and caves while the fog closed in all around. Knowing that would not have been an enjoyable experience for me either.
Later talking to guides on some of the longer trips that day I heard a few interesting stories from out there in the fog. All turned out well. These guys are skilled paddlers after all. Still, it’s not hard to imagine something going wrong out there when you can’t see a quarter mile in any direction.
Sure, I’m not going to let fog keep me off the water if all the other weather conditions are in my favor. I’d certainly be a bit more attentive. Would I take a bunch of intermediate students out there? Maybe. Tourists? I don’t think so.
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3 Responses to foggy lines
Derrick, what are the dangers in paddling in fog?
Would navigation be rather easy if a GPS was used?
If the water is calm (apart from the storm you mentioned) would taking tourist on the water be more dangerous than other times?
well, that’s if you trust your GPS.. Then there is active boat traffic, fast changing weather that you can’t predict or see coming.. As I said, nothing you would’nt face on your own.. but with day trippers I might not want to risk trying to get them to paddle out of the way of an on-coming large boat in fog or have them dealing with a sudden change in weather conditions coming again, out of nowhere.
Thanks you for your view on fog paddling.
My challenge in thick fog was to keep everybody together and not having them stray away from the pod.
Additionally I had to deal with current and unfortunately no GPS.
The upside was that paddlers were of intermediate skill level.
The occasional light boat traffic was alerted with blowing hard my whistle.