Floating by yourself

nice post

comfort in water
Generally, I would guess that non swimmers are much less comfortable in the water in an emergency. Yes, staying afloat and moving your arms isn’t that hard if you’re in a pfd. But I’d guess that most non swimmers would be susceptible to panicking if they are unexpectedly in the water, especially if alone.



Don’t do it. You owe it to yourself and your paddling partners to learn to swim. Go the the local YMCA. They’ll have everything you need.

solo…
…from the start, I’m a shift worker, so I have to go when i can. I tried to get others interested but have struck out.

Not “signifcant other”…
But I am Kathy’s “significant brother!” and primary paddling partner.



I believe Kathy’s question is driven by the fact that she works an odd shift, including many weekends, whereas I work more “normal” 8-5, five days a week. She’s not having much (any?) luck finding anyone to paddle with during the week when she’s not working (while I’m at work).

solo
My mom told me I was going by myself as little as ten. It was a slow moving river though and not far at all. Before you guys start blasting my parents, they had me paddling my own craft from a young age. I just bought two kayaks for my kids (5 and 6), it is going to be an interesting summer to say the least.

canoe self rescue
People should realize that for normal mortals, self rescue from a capsize in a canoe on a lake or river means swimming the boat to shore, or at least into a good eddy in mid river, from which the boat can be emptied and reentered.



There are videos and books describing unassisted reentry of a capsized canoe in deep water and a lot of folks figure that they could do that if necessary. It is much more difficult than it appears.



Even with floatation, if you are successful in reentering a canoe this way, you will now have hundreds of pounds of water in it, and it will be unwieldy, to say the least.



In a canoe when no help is available, a capsize during a long open traverse over cold water when not wearing a dry suit will likely mean death. I lived in Minnesota for ten years. Typically, every year one or more people drowned within 20 ft of shore. The immediate debilitation resulting from hypothermia just can’t be believed until experienced.



I think it would be difficult for a nonswimmer to get a flooded boat to the shore, PFD or no PFD.

almost always
I have no friends so I go alone.

Talking to me or in general?
I have a drysuit - two actually since I decided to put new gaskets on the one that has patches on patches, so I could preserve the new one longer.



I am fully aware of the difficulty of self-rescue in a canoe - I tried for two seasons at camp when I was a kid to do this and was (darn!) the only camper in my cohort who just couldn’t pull it off.



I am resolved to fix this issue as an adult, though I expect it to take some time, and probably float bags.



WW is another matter, and for the foreseeable future I’ll be doing that in a kayak. My strokes aren’t great in WW with a double blade, but they are non-existent for a single blade in moving water.

started paddling alone

Learn to Swim - Teach your kids to swim

– Last Updated: Apr-04-10 11:36 AM EST –

This is a bit off the topic but a few weeks ago two young folks, both ~19 and freshmen at a local college were on a date at Torrey Pines beach, they were playing around with a boogie board in the shallow water. Neither one of them knew how to swim. I had been out surfing very near there a few hours before and gave up because the waves were so small, but as the tide started going out, and a onshore wind came up from the NW, one or both, got knocked off their feet and started to be pulled in a strong rip, the guy fought and yelled for help and threw his boogie board to his girlfriend but she did not recover it and was underwater. THe lifegaurds were leaving for the day but someone flagged them down and they dove in, their street clothes and swam out in the rip and found the girl. She was underwater and not breathing. She is now still in intensive care in a hospital. She was the star tennis player at the college. The guy was swept out and under the waves and his body has not been recovered. His family and friends are of course devasted, and lots of folks have been trying to help find the body here.

This happened in a spot where the waves can be very violent and dangerous but the day this happened it was almost placid.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/mar/31/torrey-pines-conditions-too-rough-search-drowning-/

Not being able to swim.
I don’t see how that makes a huge difference in deciding if you paddle alone. You would always wear a life jacket alone or single. If you go with a friend and don’t wear a jacket, your friend gets to watch you drown. If you go alone and don’t wear a jacket and drown, they get to read about you in the paper. Not a lot of great choices there.



So wear a life jacket and happy paddling. Choose your conditions to give you the best advantage. I saw a man drown last week with a life jacket and hundreds of safety crew everywhere. There are no guarantees in life except that we all shall die.

I was speaking in general
to the orininal spirit of the thread.



But I would think with your experience you would be able to become competent with a repertoire of single-bladed strokes pretty quickly.



Not to hijack the thread, but I think floatation is a good idea for canoes used on any moving water, and often stick them in for downriver trips on Class I even at the risk of getting chuckled at.



I think Tom Foster’s DVD “Solo Open Whitewater Canoeing” is a great reference for fine-tuning canoe strokes and fundamental whitewater open boat (or C1) maneuvers.

Agree with Sea Dart
and others here who have posted about swimming. I’m often surprised these days to find how many non-swimmers are paddling in spite of how much emphasis is placed on paddling safety now. It just “does not compute” very well.



Yes, I know there are exceptions. Verlen Kruger was a non-swimmer. During the voyageur days, when A LOT of paddling was going on, “the companies” wanted non-swimming paddlers because they thought they were more likely to get their pelts home dry and undamaged if the folks in the boats had a “healthy” fear of swimming. But there were unnecessary fatalities - though I guess among voyageurs more died of untreated hernias form portages than by drowning or hypothermia. Still, this is now and that was then and those deaths were unnecessary.



I learned to swim as a kid at the YMCA before I paddled. I had no Scouting background, but read all the Scout manuals. In those days most paddlers who got any training at all (and most of us figured it out pretty much on our own) got it in the Scouts or in programs modeled on the Scouts. It seemed from the manuals that they taught paddling almost as an advanced stage of swimming - like an extension of a watersports program. You could move on to paddling after you were a good enough swimmer to do a high dive without belly-flopping, swim a mile or two, could side-stroke another swimmer in, and tread water for a few minutes with a weight. Then you could canoe or kayak. Judging by the manuals it seems they spent as much time playing around in swamped canoes as paddling. PFDs were almost an afterthought then, like useful accessories but that they weren’t thought of as prerequisites for paddling. Fairly good swimming skills were the prerequisites.



Seems like the attitude has almost reversed these days. Faith now seems to be largely placed on PFDs, paddle floats, assisted rescues, electronic connection with rescue services, and such. Swimming is the afterthought, and I’m not sure this is really all for the better. Its all good, of course, but perhaps a newcomer these days isn’t as impressed as might be wise in the importance of swimming. Many of us who have been doing this for a while don’t think of it much because we don’t dump all that often.



A non-swimmer or poor swimmer, even in a PFD, is very likely to be, if not panicked, at least nervous enough after a dump to not think very clearly. (You know who you are.) They may try to swim upstream in a channel or against a rip tide until exhausted. They may swim for a strainer to grab on to and get tangled up. They may try to walk as soon as they can and get into foot entrapment situations. On lakes or the ocean it’s probable that swimming conditions aren’t exactly ideal or they wouldn’t have dumped in the first place. Swimming a distance in waves is not like swimming the same distance in a pool. This is not a good position for a beginner to ever be in and is absolutely dangerous solo, PFD or no. My advise, for what its worth, is to ask yourself if this might be you and, if so, don’t solo just yet.



There is no substitute for being calm in the water and the best way to learn that is by spending time in the water. Like you must in order to learn swimming. Besides, its fun and good exercise.



Do that and solo paddling might well become one of the greatest joys of your life. The wildlife viewing is always better solo. Its nice to paddle without counting boats or thinking about what kind of mess others in a group might get themselves in. Its nice to pay the price for our own possible mistakes ourselves without considering what the PCers in any crowd think about our choices. Its simpler. (Well, except maybe for the shuttle thing…) The serenity of being on the water alone is unsurpassed in my experience. It hones paddling judgment - you won’t let yourself get blown too far down a windy lake twice. You’ll know absolutely how large a wave or rapid you’re comfortable dealing with. Constantly surrounding ourselves with a “safety net” of other paddlers isn’t necessarily always good for our judgment or skills.

There’s a time and place for both solo and group paddling.


Started off alone early on

– Last Updated: Apr-04-10 2:06 PM EST –

I still paddle alone most days. If I waited till someone compatible and eager to paddle was available, I'd paddle maybe once a week. That's not enough.

Gender has nothing to do with the decision. The water and weather don't pick on women more than they do men.

I agree with the advice to learn to swim first. It's not a matter of whether you will actually swim, so much as it is a fear factor. I've noticed that people who cannot swim are afraid of wet exits even if they've done them already. Having grown up in a region where everybody learned to swim, I was extremely surprised to find out how many here do not know how.

Play it safe by staying close to shore, being ultraconservative with weather conditions, and not overdoing the mileage. You could join a club and hope they know what they're doing, but sometimes "safety in numbers" is false security. There is no such thing as absolutely safe anyway.

I normally paddle lakes and reservoirs, and for a short part of the year I paddle in a WW park. Obviously, there is higher risk of something "happening" at the latter, but I don't go during the high-flow season and shoreline is always very close in this narrow creek. I never do float trips; why would you do a float trip alone anyway since you need 2 people and 2 vehicles?

Not trying to sound sarcastic…
but I was wondering exactly how do people manage to drown even with a PFD on? I’ve heard people in this forum state that in the winter, wearing just a PFD just makes it easier for people to find your body (death due to hypothermia), but what exactly are the factors that would cause one to drown in spite of having a lifejacket? The only thing I could think of was a really strong undercurrent… anything else?



Thanks in advance.


Unconsciousness
I thought I read that Type III PFDs (most common type) are not designed to keep a person face-up in the water, merely to float their body.



If this is wrong, someone please chime in.

How to drown in a pfd…

– Last Updated: Apr-04-10 8:40 PM EST –

JDizz,


Yes, you can drown in a pfd.
You are more likely to drown while wearing a pfd, "IF" you are a "non" swimmer.
If you "were" able to swim, you might be able to avoid some of the nasty spots you don't want to go with, or without a pfd.

Examples: Being swept into a strainer; downed trees in the river, or hanging over & into the river. Most of these can be avoided, even if you are in the water; if you have some swimming skills, and are able to swim aggressively to a safe area.

Being swept into an area of the river where there is a hydraulic. Some places in the area where I live have low water bridges; some of them have hydraulics on the downstream side. Some of them have large culverts running underneath the low water bridge; those culverts are "often" jammed at some point with fencing, tree limbs, fence posts, trash cans, fishing line & other obstructions.
Not a fun spot to get swept into due to the lack of ability to aggressively swim to a safe area, before you get swept into the hydraulic, or the culvert.

Foot entrapment can sometimes lead to a drowning whether you have a pfd or not. Often the current will be too fast for you to keep your head above water when your body is swept downstream(your foot stays entrapped), even wearing a pfd.
One of the first things a lot of beginners/non swimmers do when they capsize in fast moving water is to stand up; this is an ideal situation for a foot entrapment. Will your non swimming friends be able to get to where you are, and stabilize you long enough to get whatever is entrapped free?

Some rivers, have boulders that have undercuts, and potholes. A pfd is no gurantee of safe passage or easy exit if you get swept under an undercut boulder, or into a pothole in a boulder garden. With swimming skills, you may be to avoid these hazards by swimming aggressively to an area of safey before you encounter those hazards.

Most pfd that paddlers wear are "not" designed to keep your face out of the water if you get knocked out, or stunned.

Pfds are no gurantee that you will not be affected by hypothermia, and possibly drown. Swimming skills and a pfd might have gotten you out of the water & to shore "before" hypothermia occurred.

You are a swimmer, and are wearing a pfd. You capsize your canoe/kayak. A foot gets entangled in some gear, rope, whatever. The pfd will not guarantee that you will not be tacoed between the boat & a rock, tree, or root wad. A pfd will not guarantee you will not be swept over a water fall while attached to the kayak/canoe. Many waterfalls have hydraulics & strainers at the bottom.Think swimming skills might be handy if you can get loose from your boat? Is your pfd wearing, "non" swimming paddling partner going to swim out to where you are & assist you in getting free before you drown?

A pfd is no gurantee that you will not be drowned by someone you attempt to assist, if they are extremely panicky & aggressively trying to keep their head above water(perhaps because they "don't" have on a pfd, or can't swim). If you have a pfd on, and have some swimming skills you might be able to stay away out of their reach, and assist them "after" they calm down. Or you might be able to do a reaching assist in deep water; keeping a respectable distance from the panicked non swimmer. You should be wearing a pfd to do this; and if you are going into deep water you should be a swimmer too.
I have seen a large Labrador Retreiver nearly drown a young child wearing a pfd, in 4 feet of water. The child could not get the dog off of her & the dog was holding her underwater by putting it's front paws on her shoulders. A parent had to pull the dog off the child.


That's just a few examples of how you can drown with a pfd on.......but have no swimming skills.
Swimming skills assist you by allowing you to get to shore & out of harm's way, "before" you get into some of the scenario's described above.

You won't drown because you always paddle on slow moving rivers, close to shore, the weather is great, and you always wear your pfd?
More drownings occur in that type of scenario/venue than occur on whitewater. That's because most beginners, most non pfd wearing paddlers, most non swimming paddlers go paddling/floating........on what they think are the "safe" rivers.

Again, those are "just a few" examples.
Very few.

BOB

Wow Thebob.com
That’s quite a list of ways to drown in spite of wearing a PFD… too many people (myself included, at times!) put too much faith in a PFD, and skimp on attention to safety details… thanks for sobering us up with that info.


in winter
The remarks about PFDs making your body easier to find in winter probably refers to the fact that in very cold water, people without appropriate immersion wear generally lose their ability to swim or get themselves back in a boat in minutes. So wearing a PFD will just float your useless body longer if you weren’t dressed for the swim. It won’t save you from the killer - cold water.

In rough water
It is very common to drown in whitewater being pinned in your boat or upside down being flushed against a strainer, bridge abutment etc. You can be recirculated in a hydraulic or keeper hole and never be able to get air that is free of water and spray to breath.



In large ocean waves you can be held down in a breaking wave longer than you can hold your breath. You can also aspirate spray that will cause your trachea to close off and your lungs to fill with fluid, so you can drown while still floating on the surface .