Agree with that bud16415. Probably the biggest difference in skill comes in how well a paddler knows the boat and the ability to self rescue.
Knowing the boat is not that important. Paddling ability and judgement are really important. People that know boats can figure out a new boat in an hour.
People need to learn to self rescue.
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Self rescue mandate would take 90% of paddlers off the water. Most kayaks sold you just can’t do it they fill and sink.
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Same thing. If you’re skilled you figure it out in an hour. Unskilled takes longer. Some never figure it out.
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I would broaden the idea of ‘self rescue’ and include those who paddle very near shore and who can exit their kayak somehow and get to shore, with or without their kayak. Even though I have only owned sea kayaks, can roll, self & assist rescue, I can see no reason to exclude those who use their version of a kayak safely.
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Don’t let the snobs determine who is qualified to paddle a kayak!
Being conscious of safety risks is not “snobbism”.
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You’re close to shore till the wind and currents suck you out. Another FB group mostly newbies about 3500 and possibly 10 paddlers with experience there. Little wind and currents and many say they just made it back. No experience in a 8-12 rec boat they feel lucky they got back. Try to introduce them to safety and water temps. I think this winter I’m done because some get PO’ed. Not there to fight some else can fight it now. There were myself and three others. This year there can be two.
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What I hear is concern. Not snobbery. When you have passion, sometime you can be concerned to much. That’s not bad.
The more experience people have in general, the more they understand the need for safety. Not just PFDs, but dressing for immersion and practicing rescues. That includes self-rescue, rescuing others and rescuing pets. Rescuing people not in your party. Practice rescues with your paddling partners, because eventually you are going to need those skills. If you are good at rescues and have a little luck you can probably avoid body recoveryies for your whole career.
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Agree with that.
Yesterday we did a local event for the fire department and it brought out 450 boaters to our little river. Before the launch they had 5 members of the Coast Guard giving boat and gear inspection and if you passed they gave you some identification stickers for inside your hull and a sticker for the outside that is supposed to keep you from being hassled on the water as you have passed the pre-check and passed.
Of the 450 boats they said they checked about 200 and of the 450 boats about 440 were rec-kayaks and 10 were canoes mine being 1 of them. The Coast Guard lady spent a good 10 minutes looking over my canoe and equipment and she thought my Fox40 whistle needed a longer lanyard even though I showed her it easily reached my mouth. She said we like to know they are easy to get to in an emergency. I told her you can see that about 445 of these people going into the water today have their PFD and whistle stored behind their seat or bungeed to their deck. She said well the law says they have to be on the boat within reach. Then she wanted to see my visual signaling device and I said I didn’t have one. She pulled out a sheet with 4 mirror stickers about 4” dia and had me stick one on both sides both ends of my kayak paddle. I hope they come off easily as don’t care for the flashy stickers but if they attract fish I might leave them. She filled out a lengthy form and gave me advice about a white 360 light after dark and had me sign it. She was quite impressed I knew the make and model of the canoe and really impressed I knew the length of 14’7” she said I was the first of the day. Then she moved on to her rec-kayak and that only took a couple minutes her lanyard was also too short and she asked about the yoga ball under the bow deck. She said oh he put it there ask me. I told her it was additional floatation in case of capsize. She said now that’s a smart idea. And I then said you didn’t notice I have two in the canoe as well and she went back and took a closer look. We both got our stickers and she moved on to others. Not one word to anyone about wearing a PFD or that 90% of the boats had zero floatation. They were right at the launch location for at least 3 hours as people were going in and I saw no concern for if people could swim or were wearing floatation or if their boats or passengers could survive a capsize. But I have mirrors on my paddles.
The float was 12 miles and there were no reported problems except some sunburns that I bet hurt today, so that was a good and I much prefer going on it with far less people. It was interesting I encountered a lot of chatty people though and received a lot of comments on the canoe. The most memorable were two guys that I would best describe as stoners came along side and said we have to tell you dude we love that canoe and then they had a 100 questions some of them were really quite good and thought out. Then the dude with the 12” peace sign tat on his back with dreadlocks asked are you hot with that PFD on? He said can you swim? I told him I wasn’t too hot and my guess is I’m a better swimmer than 90% of the people on the river. I just like living and if I have to get in the water to help someone or if I fall in for some reason I like my odds better with it on. I had a feeling I might have turned a few brain cells on for a few seconds. Who knows.
Here is a picture of the line waiting to get in it was like that for about an hour. My canoe and her rec-kayak are sitting waiting to the right of the photo. A whole bunch of people liked my wheels and when they saw us load the rec-kayak on top and I rolled them both together they really commented. 
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+1
Close to shore also is relative if you mean a shore you actually can use… in my waters 99% of the shore is either some private ground, full of plants, cliffs, or has some other obstacles or nastiness I really don’t want to cross unless my life literally depends on it. So the official boat launches or swimming beaches are the only shore I really count as usable.
And people likely over-estimate how far they could actually swim. Even with a PFD, with a swamped kayak in tow, swimming likely sucks.
99% of people I see far away from a good shore, are in 10’kayaks with no bulkheads, no PFD… I swear sometimes I’m the only one with PFD on relatively busy waters.
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Thanks to bud16415 for a reality check.
The reality is that more and more people are getting into paddling sports with little knowledge or skill. Most regulatory agencies get caught up in the minutae of their jobs.
What still kills people are no PFDs, cold water and lack of rescue skills.
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Canada dies a much better job in safety.
I watched the video on the home page the other day of doing a back paddle swim using your kayak paddle. I haven’t tried it yet but it looks like a solid idea.
My thoughts are if you were to find yourself with a rec-kayak full of water with a good swim ahead I would leave the thing and hopefully get it later. Now if you had thought in advance to add some flotation and you could flip it and bail it some and had a painter line to tow it with it then could be brought along on your swim. If you have the skills to reenter solo that’s great but IMO you shouldn’t be out there without a partner and then do an assisted reentry or at least they could tow you in.
What an outing like I showed above has going for it is the water was very warm the river is very tame and even could have used another 6” of water. So the need for rescue skills was lessened and although I had my PFD on most people I saw in the water it was just up to their knees. But this was a perfect day and situation and a month before the river was 7’ higher than this and about 10 times faster. Then there are people that push getting on it in the spring or late into the fall and the river is ice cold even if the air might be quite warm. They use the same clothes and same precautions or lack of them at these times. When the river was 7’ higher I would hope people venturing on it against warning would be really skilled boaters but the case is they were not rather they were unskilled to slightly skilled boaters that have a high desire for thrill taking. The odd part is the same fire company that was pulling people out of downed trees clinging on to life a month ago were putting on this fun event without making wearing a PFD a rule of doing it. Then you have the Coast Guard there with a van load of folks asking what is in your cooler and the answer being water was given. I would have loved seeing them take a little more proactive role. In the past the fish and boat people were at the takeout point and writing tickets right and left for not having a launch permit on the boat or not having a whistle. This year they gave out a whistle to everyone when you signed in telling you to clip it to your PFD to avoid the fine. Didn’t see one fish and boat person all day this year.
You are correct on the reality check. I don’t know if this forum is the right place for rec-boaters to become informed but I do know there are a lot of them that need informed someplace. One question the coast guard asked me is if I ever took a safe boating course and I said yes. The people that said no were told to go to the coast guard home page and they could take it online. I haven’t looked at it yet. I know our fish commission has a boating safety page that doesn’t really teach too much.
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Also, as someone with 50 plus years in wilderness tripping, including mountaineering and winter backpacking guiding in my younger days, there were too many incidents when my group of well-trained, experienced and properly prepped and equipped adventurers had to interrupt our own outings to step in on our own or assist others in rescuing or extracting some fool(s) who had blundered into an avoidable accident or crisis due to stupidity, hubris and/or stubbornness. it’s a real buzz kill to have to abort a trip you are enjoying because somebody who had no business being in that place will die unless you step up.
And we also had multiple access crises in the climbing and mountaineering communities during the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s when reckless behavior by people with no instruction nor knowledge of safe practices or proper outfitting caused damage to the areas we used and hurt or even killed themselves, leading to some prime climbing and camping spots being placed off limits to EVERYONE for those activities.
My outdoor club has offered low cost to free annual instruction courses on climbing and other wilderness skills since 1947 and has volunteered in countless rescues and public service projects, but we were excluded as well when these closures occurred.
At one point in the mid 90’s we arrived at a prime cliff area in a state park (for which we had just won an access challenge) so we could conduct one of our beginner rock climbing courses. We encountered a group of ROTC boys from a local college who had set up to practice the sort of bounding rappelling that is often shown in recruitment ads, but which nobody in their right mind with any proper training would use in a wilderness setting. Rappelling is a critical (and too easily potentially fatal) technique we always teach (safely and with all proper equipment) in our first classes but these yahoos had shown up with polypro ski tow rope and were using clothesline cord and binder twine (!!!) to fashion seat harnesses for themselves. If you fall on a rope with no dynamic stretch it will hurt you badly, even cut you in half (for one thing, not to mention self-castration). They also clearly did not know half the knots that they needed for any sort of secure fastening. No helmets, no gloves, wearing surplus combat boots. Disaster waiting to happen on 50’ vertical drops above a boulder strewn base.
Our instructors and students that day were all female (we had found that new women students progressed much better in same sex seminars) so you can imagine the effect when a bunch of “old chicks” approached a couple dozen 19-20 year old would-be warriors. When they refused to listen to our safety concerns we had to up the ante and pointed out that they were violating the rules we had negotiated with the park, including not rigging to trees without protecting them with carpet scraps and not dislodging or damaging the rock faces. We eventually threatened to summon the park rangers to deal with them, the crew grudgingly de-rigged and departed. We had lost access to most of that area years before because tourists and would-be climbers with no training had defaced the cliffs, hurt themselves badly enough to require evac and even been killed.
Local governments and the media are notorious for not distinguishing the clueless from the qualified, cautious and well prepared – I remember news stories citing that “rock climber(s)” were involved in accidents that we knew were only reckless kids clambering over the overlook railings on a dare. Same with boating accidents: all “kayakers” and “canoeists” tend to be painted with the same brush in news reports. So we end up with public demonization of certain sports as “reckless” and “dangerous to the public interest.”
Even more maddening is when they classify an accident victim as “experienced” – as if someone who rented a resort kayak twice and just bought a plastic tub at Wally World was no different from somebody with ACA level 3 Instructor training.
My point is, that if those of us who value wide free access to the most desirable paddling environments don’t take the initiative to caution and proselytize, in the absence of some modest regulations by the authorities, we risk having the cumulative or acute incidence of woeful events in those environments trigger “cover our asses” shut downs of access to ALL.
THose who cry “nanny state” and “elitist” and “alarmist” can whine all they want, but if they think being willfully blase about the best safety practices in their recreational activities is some sort of personal entitlement, they are not entitled to get bent out of shape when those of us who understand how their potential bad outcomes could effect us get rather pissed at them.
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Even with your modified definition of a self rescue, PDs 90% would probably be close to the accurate number of paddlers taken off the water.
We could also tighten up requirements for on-the-sea kayakers. For example, since one typically capsizes in rough water, we could require that self and assisted rescues be practised in rough water rather than in calm conditions. Or maybe a bomb proof roll should be demonstrated since that is what actually is more dependable in rough conditions (both sides, of course).
Of course, what we really want is that people stay within their limitations and push the skill envelope only gently … to learn and improve. Oops, I’m already in trouble.