I was looking for info on Melker kayaks and happened on this nicely done and instructive GoPro clip that illustrates heavy surf paddling – and how to seriously damage a new $3000 kayak on its first outing. Fortunately, the paddlers were equipped to deal with the damage temporarily (and the poster reports the kayak was eventually repaired.)
Shot along Trinidad Bay State Park on the California Pacific coast, 50 miles south of Oregon.
Huge ?
More like foam piles and rocks don’t mix.
Yes. This is a very informative video that other sea kayakers can learn from. Actually, discussed it awhile back.
-sing
Yeah, a bit of hyperbole in the clip title. The kayak wasn’t “broken”, it was scarred.
Back in the late 70’s I watched a friend actually have his old school fiberglass whitewater longboat fold in half and really break when a huge foam pile flushed him out, grabbed the boat and smashed it onto the beach at Nag’s Head. We could fit the assorted parts inside his Dodge van instead of on the roof rack to get it home. But back then we built our own glass boats with shared molds and engineered them with seams that would self-destruct under enough pressure to allow escape from entrapment in the event of a severe whitewater pin.
A little before my time, but one of the most popular surf kayak /waveski designers on the west coast, his first model was popularly called “The Screaming Taco”. One evening around a campfire at Jalama campground, there were several stories told about trying to get out of collapsed fiberglass hulls.
My outdoor club had a couple of old Augsburger kayak molds (that turned out 13’ “pointy” boats similar to the Olympic slalom race standard of the day). One of the techniques the folks who did severe whitewater would build into them was cutting the deck half into two portions. then assembling both the hull and deck and the two deck halves with relatively moderate layers of fiber tape. It was theoretically possible to be able to cut through the tape (we all carried short sharp knives in our PFDs back then) and free an entrapped paddler. And with sufficient impact or continuous water pressure, the boat could break apart anyway. Which is what I think partially happened in that Nag’s Head nosedive incident.
I started out taking a lesson on surf entries and practicing on 2-3 ft waves. Not too smart to start out in heavy surf when lacking real world experience. Even at a given location the surf usually is at its worst as the tide is going out and the least at high tide.
I kept a woman learning to scuba dive from drowning. She had fallen over on the soft slopping sand at the surf line and was laying with her head underwater in less than18 inches of surf. Her instructor was busy trying to pick up one of his students and ignoring the situation. I got two people to help me pick her up and with her scuba tank and weight belt she was a hefty load to lift. Her instructor should have had his students practicing surf entries without the scuba tank and heavy weight belt.
There is a tendency to think that one can watch a youtube video and not bother to get actual hands on instruction from people with more experience and this can be a fatal mistake.