Surfski Knowledge Base

njcooksey@ymail.com
09/23/13 #14898

Team Seattle had bit of incident on our down wind paddle on Sunday from Seattle to Edmonds (8.5mi) . We had a group of 4 skis. Gabe and I, and two new guys. One guy (BC) of which had never done any downwind paddling. The other new guy (NG) was the one who put out the initial email for the paddle but has only been paddling a few months. He gets out regularly and has done a session down in the gorge and is a strong paddler on flat water. Conditions were typical fall. Rain showers, 50F air temp, 20-23kts S wind, 2-3+ ft wind waves with some cross waves coming from the SE.

Gabe circled back a few times and I put the brakes on to let people catch up. BC was doing well for his first time. NG was moving slow but seemed to be OK.

About 6 mi into our 8 mi paddle Gabe and NG were stopped about 1/4 mi back. I hung out with BC for a few mins and then saw a vertical paddle and assumed it was a distress signal. I headed back to see what was up. NG was shivering badly and could no longer stay upright. He had fallen out several times and was mildly hypothermic. Gabe was holding him up. NG was wearing a farmer john, rash guard and nylon jacket with no seal at the wrists or neck and no booties. As a side note, I could only see Gabe in safety orange, NG's dark blue jacket, black pfd and black boat made him practically invisible from a distance. We got on both sides of him, each putting a foot in his foot well and paddled towards shore. We made some decent progress and got past the biggest section of waves. After a while we tried letting him paddle but he capsized almost immediately. After another 45 mins or so of paddling we made it to sheltered water, he had stopped shivering and had good use of his arms. We let our swimmer finish paddling in the last 5 mins alone to the takeout. My wife, driving shuttle, was a little worried at this point as we were well past our ETA. I called her from the water from my cell and she moved the car down closer to shorten the paddle by a mile or so. The Lifeproof iPhone case once again proving it's worth. I also had a VHF in my vest but did not use it.

The other new guy on our paddle was solid the whole day and his only issues were his Stellar's giant footwell swamping too easily and he was roasted in his drysuit and pile.
In the end there was some lessons learned: being dressed for conditions, be prepared for the unexpected, be honest about your abilities. All the usual things that get us in trouble or get us killed. Had there been just two of us, I would have been calling on CH 16 on the VHF. It was a good reminder heading into the cold/windy paddling season that things can go bad on what some would consider a 'mild' day and what some consider a mild day may be too much for others.

–
-Nick Cooksey

Reivers Dustin
09/23/13 #14900

Great write up Nick. I got off work at noon having seen the conditions go nuclear. I went by the usual launch points and pieced together that nobody seemed to have been left behind. I heard that Morris got a warning out to folks. It was that scenario where people get drawn into overcommiting. Very hard to address. Rules of thumb work great when things are stable.

Somebody said, “I only got old and wise because I was young and foolish”. We can only build our skills in rough water by stretching our zone. I guess you try to pick ways to do that where you have a good escape route. It's very limiting to say don't go when it's rough. Back to those discussions with the Coast Guard: a radio is the best final safety line. The C.G. was so insistent, they asked if maybe they should just stockpile radios and loan them out to paddlers. From their perspective, they could have prevented all fatalities going back many years if the small boat would have had a radio accessible.

Even if you are bullet-proof, you probably want radio or cell so that you can help as much as possible. It would haunt me to have to leave someone behind knowing all I could do is call from shore or other out of sight location. There's no paddler out there that I would be ok to leave in a jam.

hehe. there's a few that think I'm old and foolish. oh well. At least I can call a water taxi as a last resort.

rd