and related to previous post, how often have conditions made you nervous

@kayamedic said:
At least once every trip to the Gulf of Mexico( Everglades) and Lake Superior… In the former I sometimes underestimate the tidal flows of rivers exiting the Everglades which produce pronounced eddy lines if the wind is coming onshore. with an outgoing tide… Even though the water is shallow I don’t fancy an upset… So far so good.
On Lake Superior the same outflow problem is even worse… For that reason we are very careful to align our boat with the outgoing current and ferry across it.
And once on Superior a very large black cloud appeared all across the horizon in back of us. We were paddling past cliffs with no landings. Remembering banjos I paddled with all my srtength… We arrived at the mouth of the Pukaskwa River just as the cloud was about a quarter mile in back of us…black as night… We got on shore and the black cloud went poof in a dense fog… It was the most threatening fog bank I have ever seen
Another was the final crossing of 3 km into Michipicoten Harbor We rounded Perikakwa point and got about 300 meters past when all heck broke loose. Someone hit the Power On switch… We were broadside in waves breaking at head height…
Turning wind to stern wasnt possible and turning at bow angle into wind wasnt working either. Somehow with semi dry underwear we made it to the mouth of the Michipicoten which was throwing up big waves… We wound up surfing… looking at the calm lagoon two hundred meters away…For ten minutes we were held by the wave.

I would have been hearing The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

@bnystrom said:
It’s happened a fair amount, again because I enjoy paddling in conditions which are challenging. I’ve had some “interesting” experiences in sea caves, gotten “up close and personal” with rocks, been pitch-poled in surf and been iced out of a harbor. Perhaps the most unnerving situations were getting caught in popup thunderstorms. It’s all just par for the course.

What happens when a paddler pitch-poles? Do you come out of your boat? Or get smashed down against the water?

Pitch pole means an end-over-end, lengthwise flip. Sort of like what happens in the weird Scottish sport of caber tossing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb0FU8rSisU

Surprisingly, getting pitch-poled was not violent. What happens is that the wave flips you bow over stern, but you land on the backside of the wave and it’s surprisingly gentle. We were in shallow water just off the beach and I think I hit the sand at one point, but none of the three of us was seriously injured. It could have been a real disaster, as it occurred in the middle of an assisted rescue with the boats on a directional tow line to keep them pointed into the waves. I vividly recall the person in the boat beside me looking up at the wave as it stood up way over our heads and rather matter-of-factly stating “We’re f**ked”. As is was, it just resulted is a massive “yard sale” of gear on the beach and a really good story to share with the rest of the group we were training with.

I was leading a night biolumensent trip at the Banana River, Kelly Park East, Merrit Island Florida. The wind picked up. Thunder and lightning was around and threatening. We had been north of the causeway at the canal and flats looking at the light show in calm water. Upon going back we faced much more wind than when we started. The opening at the causeway funneled the wind and wave. Biolumensence was active on the tops of each wave, it was pretty but stormy. Most of the “little chicks” were handling the roughness fine but we have a paddler about 82 years old that was having trouble. I hung back with her and talked her through the bridge “wind tunnel”. I did not want to do a solo rescue on the 82 yr old with bad knees in the waves, dark and rocks. This little voice calls out “I’m scared” … " just paddle, paddle, paddle" … we made it.

@bnystrom said:
Surprisingly, getting pitch-poled was not violent. What happens is that the wave flips you bow over stern, but you land on the backside of the wave and it’s surprisingly gentle. We were in shallow water just off the beach and I think I hit the sand at one point, but none of the three of us was seriously injured. It could have been a real disaster, as it occurred in the middle of an assisted rescue with the boats on a directional tow line to keep them pointed into the waves. I vividly recall the person in the boat beside me looking up at the wave as stood up way over our heads and rather matter-of-factly stating “We’re f**ked”. As is was, it just resulted is a massive “yard sale” of gear on the beach and a really good story to share with the rest of the group we were training with.

Thanks and wow - that had to be a memorable training session.

I had seen photos of pitch-poles and knew it was somersault by kayak. Has to be jarring, though, what with the weight of the boat and paddler landing on the water. This cut is from a video of paddling in Costa Brava. The guy in this still did a face plant and came out of his boat.

Maybe it technically wasn’t a pitch-pole since he didn’t complete the revolution?

During a pitch-pole the ends of the kayak move a lot, but the paddler, being at the center of the rotation, usually does not. The pitch-poles that I have done on purpose have been fun and probably looked far more violent than they felt. But they are not always gentle…

The worst (unintentional) one that I experienced was while I was trying to break out through large, ugly, dumping surf at Canaveral National Seashore (steep sand beach at high tide). It was toward the end of a long day surfing my Anas Acuta and I was worn-out and should have already called it a day. As I headed out, I clawed too slowly toward the waiting line of breakers and was too tired/lazy to to fully “become a needle” (getting into a tuck position with your torso tucked forward and the paddle along the hull, allowing you to spear through the wave). That wasn’t the time to try to save a little energy! The dumping wave hit me square in the torso, the kayak flipped backward, end-over-end, multiple times until I actually landed upright on the beach and still facing out to sea.

One of my buddies saw that and decided it was time to stop, and portaged his heavy Nordkcapp 1/4 mile back to the car. I rested a bit and recovered, was able to punch through on my next attempt, taking care to “become a needle”. If done right, with enough speed, you can shed many ugly breakers and avoid a capsize.

The good thing about practicing in conditions, is that it gives you another arrow in your quiver of techniques/experience. About five years after this experience I was again facing nasty dumpers , this time on the black beaches along the exposed southern coast of Iceland, during a circumnavigation. While the conditions were nasty, I had some relief in thinking “this really isn’t much worse than back home at my play spot!”…

Greg

Not even in my wildest dreams would I visualize practicing pitch-poles just for fun. That’s jaw dropping skill.

@Rookie said:
Not even in my wildest dreams would I visualize practicing pitch-poles just for fun. That’s jaw dropping skill.

Me either I would not want my neck snapped like Superman.

When whitewater kayaks were 11 feet and longer, something like a pitch-pole was done for fun, and still is. You found a nice pour over, stuck your nose in it and stood the boat on end (an ender) or got it to rotate the full 180 degrees to upside down. Back in the day, that was called a cartwheel. Now the same maneuver is called a loop, but the boats are much shorter, With the short boats, it is true that the paddler’s body moves little, more or less just rotating in place. With long boats, there was a bit more up and down motion of the paddler’s body and sometimes you could get smacked down on the water fairly hard. But nothing like having a big wave break on top of you.

I admit to feeling a bit anxious the first time I purled my kayak. After that, though, it didn’t bother me much and I was able to roll up and, eventually, brace through the impact with the bottom. I’ve been out in full storm a few times and any anxiety I felt was stonger looking back on it rather than when it was all happening. I tend to get pretty focused on what (and how) to execute what needs to be done. I don’t (generally) feel the emotional response until after I am out of the situation.

I remember nervousness the first time I ran a class III rapid in my sea kayak, but after running that, I was fine on subsequent runs.

I seem to feel more anxiousness when it is somebody else that is in trouble. When paddling with scouts, for example, we often had to perform rescues. Some of these were pretty dramatic, but I was definitely anxious that the results might be disastrous. i hate seeing others injured.

Rick

There was another time I went out with my son on Morro Bay and a storm rolled in. It was not in the weather report and as it is a safe, shallow, protected bay (except near the narrow mouth) it seemed a decent introduction to kayaking . I didn’t want to take him through the center of the bay once the storm hit. The chop was bad, the boats frequently recovering from swamped decks, but there wasn’t much choice and he was getting tired. I kept behind him and watched carefully (he was 10 or so at the time) as he navigated the choppy water to the dock at the far end of the bay. He was fine, and enjoyed it, but I was sweating bullets since he’d never been out is such conditions.

Rick