But in any kind of action sport or activity, if you don’t push to the point of failure you don’t get much better very fast, and you also do not truly know where your limits are. And by going to that point you can push the limits back and back and become more skilled
So when I got into kayaking I started out by learning wet exist and reentries and soon thereafter started to teach myself to roll. By far, most of my early rolling attempts were just an exercise in wet exits and reentries (again)
It have never felt any pain in my swims or my capsizes either self induced or when I was taken by surprise. So I have no fear of it. In my younger years I have been a US Marine, and later an instructor for the DOD, along with doing as lot of ice and rock climbing sky diving and competitive marshal arts. I have been punched and kicked a lot and I have fallen a lot, and I have shown the rock-rash, cuts, bruises, a few surgeries to try to repair broken bones. I got busted up once in a parachute fall when I landed in the top of a whirlwind and it sucked up and barber-poled my canopy and I fell out of the sky from about 40 feet up.
So the “fear” of swimming when I am in a wet suit and wearing a PFD simply doesn’t exist. I edge my kayak as much as I can and I know how much that is now because if I take it past that point I roll or swim. I know what my limits are in waves and chop because when I go just a tiny bit farther I roll or swim. And several times per season I simply edge of lean farther and farther with the intention to see what I can do, before I roll or swim.
My attempts to roll are not always successful, but swimming is painless. So I don’t understand the fear of pushing the limits in a kayak especially if I am not alone. If you are not failing you are not really trying.
Almost ran me over and wake flipped my 18-10" sea kayak my brace meant nothing. He wasn’t even looking. I was waving the paddle when he was way off. I just had a feeling it was coming.
You’ve had several close encounters. Never saw that type of idiocy around here. Big boat don’t slow down when passing nearby, but give wide enough berth. You need a flare gun so you can fire it into the windshield.
@Kevburg - before I realized where your linked ‘21 story was going, I saw the Epic pulled up on snow and I shuddered to see a narrow kayak in icy conditions - I never imagined that anyone would paddle a 20" kayak in ice (or an 18’ kayak through ILSRA). My kayaks are 37" wide rotomolded polyethylene, so at least I have that going for me in the cold.
@RiverWay, I usually paddle my 14’ 70’s kayak upstream as it is better at threading past trees. It has a 24" beam compared to the Epic’s 22" and it lacks bulkheads.
I’ve paddled wider kayaks only twice in my life, and on both occasions I kept thinking “How do you make this thing go?”
I have no idea how hard it is to transition from wide to narrow if you get used to wide first, but going fast is worth the learning curve. You see more and the added range gives you more trip options.
Dang.
Too bad you didn’t have a handy fistful of rocks to throw into the windshield. I’ll bet he’d notice those.
Glad you came through that experience OK
Powerboats can be a menace. If a boat is coming at you, does that mean they don’t see you? If you are operating a power boat and you want to come up to a kayak, canoe or sailboat, fall off 10 degrees so they know you are not trying to kill them.
Carry an air horn around power boats. It saved me once while sitting in my ski boat dead in the water. A power boat would cut my boat in half without the air horn.
Wear bright colors. Paddle brightly colored boats. Yellow shows up best at sea so I painted the deck of my Pygmy Coho yellow. I had a big OT Guide 18 and kept the canvas bright white.
Since you specifically asked for first person accounts, here’s one.
A few years back I was instructing a group of novice kayakers in flat water. I had 6 students and an assistant instructor. I briefed the students on shore; my assistant & I made sure that all the students were properly fitted to their kayaks, I pointed out where we would practice, and we set off. I led; my assistant swept. About halfway to the site we were going to use, I looked behind to check on the students, and immediately capsized. This almost never happens to me and I was completely taken by surprise. So, as I was sitting there upside down in my boat, my first thought was–well, this is stupid–what an embarrassing way to start an instructing session. My second thought was–this roll better be perfect… So I took an extra moment to set up and then popped right up. Nobody made any remarks. We had a good session. A couple of hours later, when were done and back onshore at the launch site, and the students had dispersed, my assistant asked me–why did you think you needed to demonstrate a roll, when these students weren’t anywhere near that level? I just laughed and told him that I’d fallen in unintentionally.
On a more serious note, if you’re paddling in cold water, you need to be dressed for the water. It may be a low probability event, but it’s a high consequence event if it happens. Risk management contains both those components–probability & consequence.
I didn’t use my power boat much this year but I’m still looking for him. He’s not even looking forward in the picture. I’ll give him a piece of my mind. It took 6 boats blowing by at speed before one stopped and ask if I was ok. I was just outside the channel buoys. If I went close to the shore the waves bounce off the hard marsh. The channel has plenty of room no need to come so close to me at all.
Never for me, but when staying at a cottage I let another guy try the super stable Pungo I had at that time. Told him he would really have to lean over to tip, and of course he immediately did and flipped it next to the dock. I laughed, he didn’t.
I needed to cut a line away from the folding prop on my sailboat and so went with a knife into San Francisco bay. Water temp was around 54 degrees and within a minute I was having trouble breathing and could appreciate how many people without a PFD will quickly drown in cold water.
Where I live the water time is usually in the 50’s and a 3/8 inch dive suit is good enough. When diving in British Columbia the water was in the 40’s and a drysuit was needed.
For me a PFD is a good waterproof vest that keeps me warmer when on top of the water in a kayak.
Here is the USGS temperature chart for one of my local rivers – the Quinapoxet near Worcester, MA – which happens to include water temperature in data it maintains.
You can see why we have a “killing season” here in New England. Right now water temperatures are in the high 40’s/low 50’s, but will drop quickly down to the 30’s and stay there until March/April. It won’t get back into the 60’s until late April/early May. We’ll have lots of warm days during that time, and people mistakenly think that because the air is warm the water must warm up as well – it doesn’t. The same thing happens in the ocean, but around here it tends to be 5 to 10 degrees warmer in the winter – still real cold.
For the past month or so I have been wearing a wetsuit with a dry top. I’ll start wearing my drysuit today, and I’ll keep it on until next April or May. I took a swim last January, and that water was COLD! I was on a relatively small river, but it was all I could do to get myself to shore. Part of it is that I am getting old.
We are just seeing the start of the winder season approaching now… We did have the 1st snow, but it was what we call “warm snow” and it got about 8" deep and was all gone in 2 days in the valleys. But the water temp of the lake is cool now. Not painfully cold yet, but very cool. Enough that in a 4-1/2 paddle yesterday 2 fingers on my right hand were getting a bit uncomfortable through a thin set of gloves. In the coming 2 weeks to maybe a month max, I’ll be going to mitts and then pogies. But here in the Mountains our water goes from warm to cold in a short period, but cold water kayaking and canoe paddling time in the fall is not something I deal with long because very soon after the water is cold enough for pogies it will freeze over solid and then it’s time for other outdoor activities, but not paddling. So from “not bad” to painful is usually about 2-3 weeks here. From painful to solid if sometimes 2-3 more weeks but it’s often from 2-3 days
Our longest cold water time is in spring, between the thaw at the valley levels and the runoff. When spring comes it warms in the lower areas first, from 4400 feet to maybe 5400 feet. That gives open water again but that water is “just barely not ice”. The temps at the higher levels are still too cold to melt off, so the lakes here will be mostly liquid but water temp is in the mid 30s. I take a LOT of precautions and wear my thickest wet suit layers, and I don’t get adventurous much, staying very close to shore and ALWAYS going into the wind so I know if I did go in I’ll blow into the shore not away from it. Any chop larger then about 6" tall I stay out of if for no other reason that at those temps I can’t keep my hands from getting so cold I can’t stand it.
Once the temps get high enough up in the mountains and the thaw start in earnest the lakes full up very quickly and of course that water is also quite cold, but at the peak of the sprig run-off the water will be in the high 50s. Then in a month or so it gets into the high 60s to low 70s because most of the lakes around me are actually not very deep. Boysen for example is just over 210 feet deep at the deepest point. Most of it is between 75 and 140 feet deep so the water goes from very cold to a temp that’s not bad at all, in a 5-6 week long span. And some times it goes from very cold to nice and then back to cold and then warms again. Just depends on how much snow we have any given winter and how the spring temps go. So I always take my thickest paddling garments along from the first trip of the spring until I KNOW the water is not going to cool down anymore. Mostly from Early April to the 1st week of June. 1 day of unseasonably warm weather at 7000-10,000 feet will cause the lakes to rise 2-3 feet and drop the temp of the water about 5-10 degrees about 2 days afterwards. The water makes those kinds of changes about 30-35 hours after the high temps hit the tops. Going from clear green to cloudy light tan always means a fast drop in water temperature here.
So as I said in my earlier post, I like to ,push myself in my skill levels and edging past the point of no return so I end up rolling or swimming is not uncommon for me but not when the water is actually cold. Those times I pay it more safely and try to stay on the top of the water. In my 1st and 2nd years kayaking was was not always successful in doing that even in cold water but I was smart enough to stay very close to land.
So yes, I have learned a lot about what immersion feels like. In both 38 degree water and in 80 degree water.
Hint: Stick closer to the 80 degree water. You can trust me about that tip.
I let a friend use one of my duralite 140 Pungos and he flipped it. The most stable kayak that I’ve paddled. That was the first of two assists, with the most recent occurring about a week ago. In both cases, the “victims” proved to be their own worst enemies. Both tried to blow off their embarrassment and pretend that everything in the world was just fine. The first occurred in 78° water and the second was in 64° water.
As hard as dumping a Pungo is to believe, I saw a video of a paddler do several perfectly executed roll and recovery sets in a Pungo.
Thats very similar to the Chesapeake Bay temps, where the water hits about 60° by 1 May and peakes around early to July at around 86°. Water temperatire on Tuesday was reported as 64° (same as last week).
