So in my youth I was on the school swim team. Good God we swam a lot in training. Later I certified as a lifeguard and kept current to maintain my state wilderness guide license and as a guide instructor. Working with the Boy Scouts, at the waterfront and also when training trek leader guides for BSA National Camping School, of course PFDs are always worn by everyone when on or near the water. As a training scenario, I will sometimes start paddling without wearing a PFD, to see if/how the guide trainee notices and then handles the situation ( “I can swim”)
In my mid 60’s I certified with the NY Homeland Security as a swift water/flood rescue technician. Before being allowed to enter the training I had to demonstrate 50 yards each of four different strokes, and to tread water using legs only (hands held above the surface) for 5 minutes, and to dive to retrieve weights from depth.
As a canoe racer, many racers do not wear PFDs; while racing. I will admit to the same from time to time during mid summer flat wate rraces. But at any time there are questionable conditions of current, temperature, wind, or unfamiliar and wide waters, all in my canoe will don their PFDs. Most times in those conditions, the race director will require it, but otherwise wearing tends to be optional.
Here are a couple of videos of the NY swift water training facility activities.IIt was a fantastic course, lots of fun and instructive, which I followed up later in the winter with the ice/cold water rescue certrification course through the ice, and then last season, the motor boat rescue course:
It is not so much about IF you can swim, but how long you can last in deep water and current. I can hold my own in a pool, but the last swiftwater rescue class I took whipped me but good. I lasted like no time swimming against a slight current and the last time I bounced out of my boat in a decent rapid, I was huffin and puffin to catch up to my boat and get to shore. That does not even figure in cold water which will wear you out even quicker. Whatever your estimate of how far you can go is , reduce it.
Thanks for the link. I was a lifeguard in my youth and the skills we had to learn to pass the test I still use every time I go swimming. I consider myself a great swimmer and can do all the tasks in the article with no problems.
However, that being said, I also know what it feels like to capsize in a boat while wearing a PFD. We were in the water about 45 minutes before help arrived and even though I’m a great swimmer, I really think things would have turned out differently had I not been wearing my PFD.
Yup. I can do all that and more. Former lifeguard. Former competitive swimmer. But I still wear my PFD. Why? Rough water is rough. Also, I found myself thrust into an ocean rescue once, without flotation. I was nearly drowned by one of the three I was attempting to help rescue. That really brought it home as to how bad it can be.
Once I swam a Class V rapid, and was thrust into a major reversal. It was cold and dark down there, in a big maytag. There was no way to tell which way the surface was. Fortunately I was wearing a rafting PFD with 30 pounds of flotation and got washed out of the reversal. After hitting the surface I went about 6 feet in the air. After puking some water I was fine. That experience had me sold on PFDs forever.
I have taken swims in past years that I am pretty sure would kill me now. Someone who is very competent swimming in a pool has a better chance surviving a long swim through rapids, but the latter experience is very different than anything that happens in a pool. Downstream vision is very limited. Big waves and holes push your head underwater repeatedly. The river decides when you can breathe, you don’t.
Accidentally inhaling a bit of water is common and you must stifle the urge to cough when your head gets pushed under. Trying to pierce eddy lines to get out of the current often requires very different techniques than one might use in a pool. One often needs to employ ferries to use the current to move laterally while maintaining a downstream view.
I can actually swim. I’m not uncomfortable doing so and can do a distance with a decent crawl, sidestroke, backstroke, and breast stroke. Passed Red Cross lifesaving a long time ago, weight retrieval and all that. I don’t panic in a problematic swimming situation and have proven it recently. But I haven’t swum a mile nonstop in many years…
But I know enough to know swimming rapids is a whole different game than a swim in rough lake waters like in a crossing of a bay mouth or similar… a BWCA type environment. We haven’t considered that here yet. Different tactics, decisions, options, and a different skill set. You wouldn’t be swimming if the waves weren’t pretty huge. Not like pool or calm lake swimming at all. Not so much concern about entrapment in rocks, keepers, or strainers as in rapids. But you still need a PFD unless you’ve recently swum the English channel or something, in which case you’d only want a PFD. Then while you’re treading water, there’s a decision to be made, assuming there’s no help available (and an assisted rescue of a canoe in waves that are big enough to swamp a canoe makes it likely that help won’t be available), leaves one deciding whether to stay with the boat (and probably gear that will be necessary to make it out of a remote area) or make a distance swim to shore. Perhaps in pretty cold water. Perhaps to shore cliffs ( yikes). And there really shouldn’t be a lot of time spent considering options.
You really want to be wearing a PFD - no matter how good a swimmer you are (or were). In moving water or wind and waves.
Remember this? 25:19 - 31:05
This might be controversial but people need to practice swimming rapids. Find some safer ones. Choose warmer water temperatures. Have people standing by with rescue lines. Then you can practice using those too. It is all part of being competent in moving water. You have to practice.
Practice swimming rapids is commonly done is swift water rescue classes. Relatively safer rapids are selected and downstream safety is provided. One has to set ferry angles to maneuver laterally in the rapid and has to eddy out into a safe bank eddy.
Ferrying and piercing eddy lines takes longer and more effort swimming with a PFD than it does paddling a canoe or kayak. But because your downstream view is so much more limited, you often have less time to plan and make these moves than you do in your boat.
Swimming a rapid is one thing. Doing the same thing while self-rescuing a boat is another thing altogether. Those who have not had occasion to do this sort of thing tend to minimize the difficulties involved.
The same thought process for those of us who paddle in open water (i.e. big lakes, bays, or ocean areas) or near open water areas…we need to practice swimming in the surf zone as that is where we probably will need to land to return to shore.
While practice in swift water with safety observers may have some value, you must be sure those safety observers know the proper procedures for rescue. There are safe ways and there are very dangerous ways to effect a rescue, practice or real. When you take a swift water rescue certification course, you may be shown a video of just such a scenario in which a trainee is lost and never seen again, due entirely to the wrong procedures taken by would-be rescuers very mistakenly doing what they thought was right. And that was in the confined concrete river channels in Los Angeles. Who would have it thought it could result in taking the life of a fit EMS swimmer?
Short answer is Yes. Many years of swimming laps, 9 years of being on a swim teams. Southern Tier Swim Club out of Binghamton NY, and HS. Go Bulldogs !
This is NOT going to be the norm, But the one time I was forced to put on a lifejacket, I almost drowned. Sail boat went over and I was pinned under the sail, I had to remove my lifejacket, to swim out from under the sail. The others I was with were oblivious to me not surfacing. More worried about their boat than anyone’s safety.
OH and Yes I will don a life jacket when heading out on big water.
Proper and improper use of throw ropes, throw bags and other swimmer rescue techniques is extensively covered in any good swift water rescue training curriculum. With modern equipment it is very common now for a young whitewater boater’s technical skill to progress to the point that he or she is paddling quite difficult whitewater within a year or so. I have known some whitewater kayakers paddling Class IV+ whitewater who never took a swim in anything worse than Class II water right when they were starting out, and some who had not even done that.
Anyone who is even semi-serious about paddling whitewater and does it for any length of time and with any consistency is guaranteed to swim a rapid at some point in time. It is better to have that experience initially on a Class II+ or III- rapid under controlled conditions than it is for it to happen on a Class IV-V rapid with no set downstream safety.
Unfortunately, due to budgetary and time constraints Fire Department personnel, EMS, and other first responder types assigned to swift water rescue duties in many locales do not have sufficient training. That is changing now to some extent, but there have been many tragic incidents in the past in which such well-meaning individuals sacrificed themselves or put their lives at risk through sheer ignorance. It is now often the case that a group of highly skilled and experienced paddlers running difficult whitewater have more knowledge and first hand experience than the local “officials” assigned swift water rescue duties.
Swift water classes are great. There are none around here in Nevada. Taking one class is not the answer. You need to practice and make sure your paddling partners know what they are doing. I have been on rivers with several people once because they were incompetent and not capable of doing a simple rescue.
More training is always better than less but, in my opinion, swift water rescue classes are a bit excessive if you don’t plan on doing more than flat water. By flatwater, I don’t just mean lakes, but rivers like the quiet water sections of the Green and Colorado in Utah.
What I do recommend is, on a warm day, getting the group together for a little practice in helping someone get back in a canoe or kayak or pulling it to shore (usually the better option). I did several trips, with a group of friends, down the Green and Colorado, but stopped going wit them when the trips started becoming a floating kegger. They’d take along ridiculous amounts of gear, including lots of beer, booze and dope, overloading the canoes, and raising the canoes center of gravity. The next year, after I stopped going, I heard that one of the canoes capsized. What a surprise! Very unlikely to happen if you load your canoe properly and don’t paddle half drunk, but it does happen.
By and large, the official certification level swift water rescue training classes are meant for first responders, including myself, as a wilderness SAR tream leader supporting the NYS DEC Rangers. Flatwater and swift water both included, far beyond the still very valuable Boy Scout Safe boating instruction that I have provided to adult BSA trek leader guides and scouts for many years. I had a tremendous amount of fun during the state/homeland security level training courses in swift water, ice water and motor boat rescue and learned a great deal about the kinds of situations and emergency incident situations I might be called upon to support in the rivers and waterways of the Adirondacks where I live, and multiple entries in the Yukon River races.
On any moving water and even on flat water it is still worth learning how to use a throw bag or throw rope properly. Lots of people buy a throw bag, never use it, and when the need arises are unable to do so effectively. Even if you have practiced with throw ropes and bags the skill is quite perishable.
Yup. The ability to not panic, relax and hold your breath doesn’t have anything to do with the ability to swim. There are many good swimmers who wash out of some courses because they panic underwater.
