Some here need to pay better attention to the weather, folks who are commenting. The winds in the northeast and halfway down the coast were very high over the weekend. They lost three or four guys from a recreational motor boat in the area of St Mary’s City Maryland, also experienced high winds plus gusts over 50 mph. The working boats didn’t even go out for two days near as I could tell, I was staying on the river. Ideally a combination of good judgement etc avoids such an event. But without a lot more info than anyone has put into this thread, there is no way to gauge how much of this was lack of preparation and how much was a fairly well prepared person still being in worse than they could handle.
I’d join in the speculation, but I already did that the last time a link was posted to an article detailing this event.
I went in search of more details, which were sadly lacking. Few that aren’t deeply involved in this sport care about what kind of boat paddled and clothing was worn. Oh well. I guess it’s better to scare the masses. It might make some people thing twice before going out and doing something similar.
I did a Google scrape (a-la-Datakoll) to find a bunch of places talking about the event in order to get more details, but alas not much more than what’s already been stated.
http://www.wmur.com/article/woman-killed-in-kayak-accident-on-bow-lake/8280805
http://www.nh1.com/news/nh-officials-id-62-year-old-kayaker-that-drowned-in-bow-lake/
http://www.fosters.com/news/20161111/woman-drowns-in-bow-lake
Well that’s interesting. Apparently YouTube links automagically get displayed as an embedded video.
Not sure how I feel about that.
@Celia said:
Some here need to pay better attention to the weather, folks who are commenting. The winds in the northeast and halfway down the coast were very high over the weekend. They lost three or four guys from a recreational motor boat in the area of St Mary’s City Maryland, also experienced high winds plus gusts over 50 mph. The working boats didn’t even go out for two days near as I could tell, I was staying on the river. Ideally a combination of good judgement etc avoids such an event. But without a lot more info than anyone has put into this thread, there is no way to gauge how much of this was lack of preparation and how much was a fairly well prepared person still being in worse than they could handle.
If you have the proper gear on and hit the water I think you have a good chance of survival. If you are comfortable (no panic) in the water with a dry suit and PFD odds are good. Weather is always in play and so is experience. No matter what the weather is when I leave I always turn on the VHF for a report just as a rule. Most I have been out in was 35 knot winds with higher gust. Waves in small bay maybe 2.5’ -3’ tops, close breaking waves all whitecaps. I am a strong paddler and I had all I could do to make headway probably 2 mph my guess and even turn with a rudder-ed CD Solstice was a big chore. Would not like to be caught out in anything like that for a long period of a few hours. Sad you go for fun and end up dead. Many things to consider when launching. Weather, skill, health, kayak’s capabilities, your strength, communications available to you, float plan, water temps, air temps, how far from shore you could be blown, how far away is rescue party if needed. We should probably have a safety sticky thread at the top permanently for suggestions.
The climbing community has had an excellent resource for many decades in the American Alpine Club’s annual “Accidents in North American Mountaineering” which contains detailed narratives of as many serious and fatal accidents as they can collect. Wikipedia describes it succinctly: “For this annual publication, the AAC collaborates with the Alpine Club of Canada to cover accidents caused by inadequate protection, clothing or equipment; inexperience; errors in judgment; and climbers’ pursuing of objectives beyond their abilities. Published with the intention of informing climbers and preventing subsequent accidents, each report includes a detailed analysis of what went wrong (and sometimes what went right in the aftermath) and what precautions could be taken to avoid a similar accident.”
When I was active in mountaineering in my younger days this was important reading, especially for those of us who taught and guided. The “CSI” type dissections of what went wrong were very instructive. There were many times I read tales and said to myself “that could have been me” which made me more attentive to preparedness and caution on subsequent outings. Some of the paddling magazines have done the same with individual incidents. Maybe there is a place on a site like this for archiving such reports for reference and education?
Don’t know how active this site is. https://www.kayakacademy.com/pages/accident-reports
Last report was February 16, but perhaps because no one is sending him info. There’s been quite a few on the Great Lakes this summer, including one fellow who capsized in Lake Michigan on Labor Day weekend whose body still hasn’t been found. Maybe I’ll send him the URLs.
here’s the database for my neck of the woods- there’s a reason why I’m preachin’ dress for the swim, wear your pfd, and boat within your abilities.
http://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/Accident/browse/?year=&state=WV
The outcome could have been different in season… Even in May. I am fairly close to Bow Lake but in a different municipality and state. Because we have to remove our docks before ice up by the middle of October there are no boats on the lake and no docks. Ergo you can get the situation where there are hapless witnesses with no boat. With a PFD in the summer or even beginning October she would have been more likely to have been run over by a boat than succumbing to time in the water.
@Paddledog’s reply (I take it things are not nesting yet on this new site)
To be clear, if the paddler had been fully prepared for the conditions they found this whole thread would not exist - because no one would have lost their life. My point was that some folks are making assumptions that this was a terribly under-prepared paddler - rec boat, no cold water gear and no practice in self-rescue. That is something it seems no one knows. For a 65 year old woman, who (I can attest) may chill more easily than a young guy to start with, there is a lot of middle ground in terms of preparation where it may have been present but not enough for the conditions.
Just to get to the big one, the weather report would have been a no-paddle day for me. Even with a group. I am getting old. The holidays are upon us and writing up cards done comes in ahead of a nasty swim. I think a lot of people can agree on that one.
But that does not mean that the paddler did not take what they thought were adequate measures to handle it. Without them here to speak, we don’t know that.
Yeah, tragically the paddler did not gauge things right here. But it does not mean they didn’t try and these stories are pretty inadequate on telling us that.
Yes, it is tough to make a clear case as to what specifically happened here with not every fact being made readily available for public consumption through news reports, but to even the most common layperson there are many factors present within the reported story which certainly lead to speculation. For all we know though, this situation could have initially begun with the kayaker herself suffering from some sort of heart-related medical emergency whilst paddling, and only happened to coincide further with the advent of bad weather & conditions of which she got caught up in as a result of.
Still, there is much that can still be learned following such instances of tragedy on other various levels. Familiarity with proper bracing techniques, the handling of stressful situations when faced, self-rescuing abilities, and weather forecasting have all been previously mentioned in prior posts. Certainly if a kayaker finds oneself lacking in any of the aforementioned areas, then obviously better understanding of each is in order - hence drill, drill, drill. Don’t forget about partnering up as well. Clearly though the saying “when in doubt, simply do not go” is some basic common sense to ultimately live by regarding such things.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Keep safe out there all my fellow kayakers, and let’s try and minimalize any more future reporting of such tragic incidents, especially incidents that might possibly be clearly preventable.
https://www.kayakacademy.com/pages/accident-reports is an active reporting site. I had sent George Gronseth (who used to write the safety column for “Sea Kayker”) a few reports from the Great Lakes and received a response from him today. He is still compiling them so if you know of any incidents, do forward them on. His email address is at the noted website. If there was a news story relating to the incident, he would like the URL as well.
Hasn’t been mentioned, and I suspect many here already know, but the Sea Kayaker Deep Trouble (http://amzn.to/2gyW3CH) and More Deep Trouble (http://amzn.to/2fEWuag) books are great resources on the type of troubles that occur with sea kayaks.
The first book I think was written better, but the troubles they occur (often boats without flotation) are getting a little dated as modern boats generally have designs that void some of these issues (first book was published in mid-90s). The More Deep Trouble version does cover much newer/more common current problems that can occur.