On moving water you have to be able
to effectively body ferry at least to an eddy before something bad comes up…so some swim technique is needed solo.
Its unfortunately not always just floating feet first down the river before there is a calm pool.
And if you have a hand occupied with paddle and rope,swimming is a little more difficult.
Rivers are another game. I feel safer paddling lakes but rivers always have surprises.
Just as in EMS, you plan for the worst and hope for the best. Paddling is not much different.
You’re right
Sorry, I didn’t realize she couldn’t swim when I replied.
I guess there’s a lot that could be said about swimming. Some disabled people who can’t swim do kayak—most likely with an instructor alongside. If you’re wearing a PFD you’re bouyant, but swimming strokes are still useful/necessary.
I regret any appearance of encouraging the OP to kayak alone. I would now encourage her to learn to swim before kayaking at all, even with others. A kayaker who can’t swim endangers others who may have to come to her rescue.
PFD…
– Last Updated: Apr-04-10 8:42 PM EST –
Kobzol,
You have on your pfd, but you can't swim.
You are kayaking on the ocean; you encounter a rip current.
Your kayak capsizes; you have no self rescue skills. You get separated from your kayak & your kayak paddle.
Even with no swimming ability, you are OK; you have on your pfd..........
You'll just float & dog paddle to shore; you don't need any swimming ability.
Your kayak & your paddle will also just float to shore.
It's all good..........
RIGHT?
I don't think so........
BOB
P.S. I am not opposed to solo paddling.
Have done some myself; even some whitewater solo.I was not a beginning paddler; I wore a rescue pfd with extra flotation, I had excellent swimming skills, I had self rescue skills, and very extensive training. Even with those skills, a pfd & over 35 years of paddling experience; I was/am not drown proof.
I’m not sure why
– Last Updated: Apr-03-10 9:53 PM EST –
you are asking the question---I paddled alone when I wanted to go out but didn't have anybody to paddle with---I already had plenty of canoing and white water kayak experience at that point. and I had a roll and self rescue. I also could swim.
Are you asking if you should paddle alone?--Is Jeffschoaf right--that you don't know how to swim and have never done any self rescue practice? If your question is should you paddle alone I guess my answer is so long as you don't go in water over your waist and the temp of the water is over 70, then you should be ok.
Yes, but …
Judging by the names of the Original Poster and the poster who reported she can’t swim or self rescue (both have SHOAF as last name), I’m going to go out on a limb and figure one reason this question was asked is to settle a difference of opinion.
Neither of you is going to get a definitive answer here, but you will get some factors to consider, so here is my two cents worth.
I am female and paddle by myself, but I paddle within my limits – and judget those limits conservatively when I’m alone.
I almost never paddle a river alone unless it is one I know well and conditions are benign. Too many things can go wrong in places where you can’t get to help easily and others can’t get to you or even find you.
Most of my solo paddling is on a lake where I know the best landing places and where there are usually fishermen around who could help me if necessary – but I recognize that help may not come quickly, so i seldom paddle solo when the water is cold (that’s changed somewhat now that i have a dry suit).
When I started paddling solo, I stuck close to shore.
I did not paddle solo until after I had taken lessons, including self-rescue lessons.
Not sure what ladies has to do with it
– Last Updated: Apr-04-10 11:42 AM EST –
A few random comments - first off I don't get what the ladies part has to do with anything. Paddling alone is a matter of assessing your paddling, the conditions and your rescue/recovery skills correctly. That's not gender related.
If gong down a river means white water, we usually see groups going down together. My husband and I have never done WW with less than four.
I usually paddle with my husband or a local crowd. But I picked up a canoe last fall, and much/most of my time trying to get the strokes down was then and will probably remain alone.
But - to echo what others above have said - I am a quite competent if not pretty swimmer, especially with a PFD on. And one of the things I will be working on as soon as the water tops 50 degrees on will be figuring out how to equip the canoe and train myself to be able to self-rescue in it.
Even with the above, there are trips I have refrained from taking because the situation was one where it really required a certain number of paddlers to be safe should something unexpected occur, and we didn't have that minimum. This has happened on the ocean, and even with the people who are there all having solid rescue skills and being dressed for immersion and all that good stuff, the count just didn't meet a safe minimum.
These were trips where the minimum count was four.
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?