He made it 70 miles off the CA coast. Rough seas and a failed GPS is what did him in.
You can have all the right gear, do everything right, and still get into trouble.
Coast Guard rescues kayaker attempting journey to Hawaii 70 miles off the coast.
“Recognizing that the situation was beyond his capabilities and calling for assistance allowed our crews to reach him in time for a successful rescue,” said Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Kroll, a Coast Guard spokesperson. “This shows that even experienced mariners with proper safety equipment can get into trouble on the ocean, which is why having the right equipment and knowing when and how to use it is so important.”
Funny you mention that. With the explosion of people moving to CO for their ‘adventure lifestyle’, people getting in over their head and needed to be rescued has skyrocketed. Some of the SAR activities undertaken by small towns/departments can put a serious financial strain upon them, so billing them for their rescue has been brought up a lot.
The trade off is them being afraid to call for help then.
Should the public, us, have to foot the bill for rescuing people who get into trouble taking risks for the adventure?
Side note: A woman sued a car company because the commercials showed the vehicle overcoming obstacles with ease. She and her daughter drove into the national forest, got stuck and had to be rescued. That’s the reason there’s that tex warning in commercials of vehicles overcoming obstacles, etc.
It sounds like his rudder and sea anchor failed, so bailed out. But if 2 critical pieces of equipment failed that quickly/easily, I’d highly consider a design improvement before trying again… also the weather doesnt appear abnormal.
Ohh, I found a pic of the conditions earlier that day. They look fun! Not enough wind swell though. Wait, I need to go West? Why travel upwind? Masochisim? I’d choose the downwind route. Much more fun. Also Epic (the surfskii maker) made his kayak, so you know it would surf well.
I might have a problem. I saw this and though ‘meh, not that bad’
in CO, we call them “rocky mountain tree cleaners” as their 4x4/awd vehicles can take off faster, but they can’t stop any faster, so they usually are aided in stopping by a tree—which then knocks the snow off of them. People from the warm states that fly in, then rent one are the best tree cleaners of all.
Oh, sort of a John Deutschendorf Flyer, sans wings:
She’d been warned in the winter of her twenty-seventh year,
coming home to a place she’d never been before.
She left iced roadway behind her,
you might say he was born aloft.
You might say she won’t be needing that remote key entry door.
When she first came to the mountains her life was far away,
on city roads where your hangin’ on the horn.
But the Select-Trac’s already broken, she doesn’t really care.
She chargin’ curves fast, and now she’s gone airborne.
She’s a Colorado Rocky Mountain tree cleaner.
Who says those Manhattan streets are so much meaner?
There’s a lodged lodgepole in the grillwork,
through broken windshield white powder flyyyyyyyyys!
Rocky Mountain tree cleaner…Colorado.
Rocky Mountain tree cleaner…Colorado.
Now if I could only get Weird Al to accept/produce my Hose Smear/Take Me To Lurch submission.
yup,those commercials are all about selling the sizzle instead of the steak. The YJ (wrangler) jeep came into existence to keep chrysler out of courts as it was lower and wider thant its predecessor, the CJ7. But they’d not sell as many jeeps if they advertised it as “the safest jeep to drive on the streets”.
Very few people in CO are actually billed for rescue cost reimbursements because the state has a fund that departments can access. With every fishing or hunting license sold, there is a $0.25 fee added that goes into the Search & Rescue Fund. If you have a valid license at the time you need to be rescued, you are automatically covered as far as costs and the county or agency is pretty much reimbursed immediately. If you aren’t a hunter or fisherman, you can get a CORSAR card for $3 for 1 year or $12 for 5 years. It used to be called a Hiker Certificate, and it’s a pretty good deal. At the end of the year, if the fund still has money then counties can put in for money for rescues that weren’t initially covered (this fund does not cover transport costs once you are “rescued”, such as ambulance transportation).
As a long-time CO resident (my son is 4th generation), yes we are basically being over-run these days by people moving in to experience the great outdoors. Trails are being trashed and abused like never before (land and water), and rescues are indeed up. It will be interesting to see how long the SAR fund can keep up.
that’s one of the reasons we left. We had to go further and further out to get away from people. People find it hard to believe we used to be able to go into the national forest around deckers (longwater gulch), set up camp by the river and rarely see anyone even on a weekend. Last time I was there (long ago) the forest service had all of the trailes chained off as people were trashing them and the area. The worst are the mountain bikers–they go flying down trails, around blind corners. OK, one of the worst…
