You’re right
At second glance, I think you’re right.
you can learn a lot
by learning to handle your boat in current as glenn says. It’ll translate to oher types of paddling as well.
Love the damns… also
I am sure that was a correct term.
Seriously, if the folks you saw that made it look easy were in boats tuned for moving water, it have actually been so. (easier for them) Were you able to tell if they were in ww or crossover boats, rather than a rec boat like yours? Not that they also did not have to know how to manage it, but as has been said above the Pungo is not the right boat for moving water.
So - you may have been seeing things very accurately.
Lucky
Not everyone is fortunate to live through their errors of judgement.
Level is high
– Last Updated: Jun-19-14 3:59 PM EST –
https://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/River/detail/id/3595/
The American Whitewater site usually has good river information in addition to the gauge links.
Glenn is the one who got it right though
– Last Updated: Jun-19-14 5:37 PM EST –
Sure, a different boat would be nice, but it's hardly necessary in this case. You don't need a boat that's specialized for moving water just to get to shore in a hurry when you don't like what you see up ahead. With just a bit of looking downstream, you can make a plan to be off the water in a few seconds no matter what boat you are using (he was only 30 feet from shore).
Back-ferrying is a very basic skill, and a plain backferry in steady current is actually much easier to do with a fairly hard-tracking boat than a turny one. You don't need to be able to paddle faster than the current. If you can point your stern in the proper direction while paddling whatever speed you can do, you'll be to shore really quickly.
As an alternate method, I've yet to see a case where one can't do a 180-degree spin leading into a quick front ferry to the riverbank, even if the "eddy turn" is rather slow and occurs over a somewhat extended distance due to a minimum zone of slower current along shore and using "the wrong boat". It's still do-able and shouldn't take more than 10 seconds even with the worst combination of hard-tracking boat and not enough of a zone of diminished current speed along the shore.
Remember, we're not talking about dancing around numerous rocks in fancy style, just getting to shore quickly. You make the idea of simply getting to shore sound so much more complicated and boat-dependent than it is. The original poster needs basic technique to a far greater degree than he needs a different boat. Yes, if the shore is obstacle-strewn, having "the wrong boat" would make things more difficult, but the only thing mentioned was strong current and the OP's desire to escape that current.
I guess so…
Normal flow according to AW is between 1400 and 2100 cfs, and you were out in 9000 cfs. Is that right?
It looks like the AW entry is for the surf wave and not the river, but still…
Yikes.
I was thinking of edge control
Edge control is way easier in a well fitted ww boat than a nearly open cockpit/no thigh braces boat like the Pungo. If the paddlers the OPer saw were in full out ww boats… which the “little boats” made me think of… and knew what to do they really would have had a pretty easy time ferrying across a moderate current compared to wrangling a Pungo thru it.
Edging only matters when …
– Last Updated: Jun-19-14 6:08 PM EST –
... the boat has plenty of speed through the water that supports it and you need to make a sudden turn (VERY different than simply drifting rapidly with a slow through-the-water speed and needing to change direction), OR when suddenly entering a zone of flow having substantially different speed than the one you've been in up to that point, because then the direction of current streaming along the hull is momentarily different than in a flatwater situation (and this situation only lasts as long as it takes for the boat's momentum to be overcome by this new current velocity). Simply ferrying in steady current (forward or backward) requires no edging, and the reason for this gets into the realm of relative motion that some people just won't try to understand, but the boat is simply going straight through the water that supports it, even if the actual travel direction relative to fixed objects is different. Your boat's component straight-ahead velocity through the water and the component added by current direction combine to make an entirely different travel direction, but the water passing by the hull is simply streaming along in just the same way as any other time (it's the same reason that you can paddle straight forward yet hit a rock with the side of your boat when in current). Deciding to ferry to shore in steady current is an entirely different situation than the "jet Ferry" that results when suddenly nudging your boat into a zone of faster flow (there, edging can be necessary). In steady current, a hard-tracking boat really is easy to back-ferry, simply because directional control is so easy. All you have to do is point the boat and paddle.
Many good comments in the thread
A few of my own thoughts:
- I don’t think you need or probably even want a specialized WW boat. From your description, the stretch of the river you’re paddling doesn’t require any technical maneuvering. That is, you’re just dealing with current and perhaps some waves. If you’re interested in efficient ferrying and attaining (paddling up-river), a boat with good hull speed is your best bet.
- Learning to ferry effectively is, in its most basic form, understanding where the water wants to take you and how quickly, where you actually want to be, and how you need to angle your boat relative to the current to get there (assuming it’s even possible). This takes practice. Obviously, it’s a lot easier to start with slower currents and work your way up.
Being able to read what the water is doing is also very important to this exercise. In particular, you want to be able to quickly identify and utilize eddies (water running counter to the main flow) and patches of relatively slower current.
I agree with most of what you say
insofar as edge control not being all that critical in simply crossing a relatively consistent current. But I’m not sure I get the emphasis on back-ferrying. I definitely agree that it’s a good skill to have under your belt for certain circumstances, but on an unobstructed river, it seems like you’d almost always be better off just turning your boat around and assuming an upstream ferry angle for two reasons. First, most people paddle more efficiently forward than backwards. Second, you can see where you’re going without having to look behind you, making ferry angle adjustments easier.
I agree with you
– Last Updated: Jun-19-14 6:42 PM EST –
I put some emphasis on the back-ferry for the simple reason that it was a basic "escape idea" presented above by Glenn, and I agree with him that it would have been a really quick way for the OP to get to shore once he got scared. I'm not actually saying a backferry is universally better, though I would say that for a person who's turning skills are poor, a backferry will be a lot easier and quicker way of getting to shore in an emergency than anything else. Outside of those minor details, I agree with you.
By the way, as a canoer who doesn't own any whitewater-specific boats, I've found the backferry to be invaluable in many "oh-shit" moments, where there simply wouldn't have been time to spin the boat around and paddle forward. Basically, I'm saying the same idea applies here, with the "oh-shit" moment being a pretty mundane and relaxed situation to you or I, but an apparent emergency to the original poster because he still needs to develop his basic skills before having any real level of comfort.
Oh, and I guess I have to add that I also sometimes back-ferry as a maneuvering technique while moving downstream in rapids, so I'm actually looking in the direction of travel and am ready to paddle forward when the maneuver is complete.
Boat control
– Last Updated: Jun-19-14 8:13 PM EST –
Edging or not (sounds like some portion of the OPer's path may have been amenable to a jet ferry), the paddler still has to control the angle of the boat to the current for a ferry. The Pungo has no grip to do that decently without some nasty action on the paddler's knee caps.
The options left are to paddle very effectively and aggressively, and/or get some advantage by altering the hull shape a bit. It sounds like the OPer ended up doing the first. Had the second been an available option it might have made things easier.
Opportunity perhaps, but didn’t happen
– Last Updated: Jun-19-14 9:56 PM EST –
The opportunities to jet-ferry, as would be possible if parked in an eddy and needing to cross an adjacent zone of rapid flow, may indeed have been present here and there, but the OP's boat never ended up in such places so the point remains moot. Even if he had encountered that situation the point would still be moot since he wouldn't have been able to execute the maneuver at his skill level, even with a more-suitable boat (what's more, any person who already knows how to do this would be perfectly able to make it happen in "the wrong boat" - he/she would just be less comfortable while doing so).
We know he didn't get into situations suitable for a jet-ferry because with all the emphasis he put on telling us how he was unable to make good progress paddling upstream, it's a pretty sure thing he didn't forget to tell us how he lost control and his boat was spun end for end, or that he got the feeling while in his boat that was just as if someone had yanked a rug out from under his feet. No, I don't think he forgot to tell us those things. These things didn't happen, and the main detail of his story is pretty much as he described. In that case, the really basic means of getting to shore which have been mentioned, methods requiring no special boat and no edging, would have been quite sufficient.
Oh, by the way, for general ferrying when NOT in a situation where the boat has not just entered a new zone of current of different velocity, edging is pointless (seems I've said that before, and to simply say otherwise rather than suggesting a reason why gets us nowhere). The boat can't tell that it's drifting with a steady current as you paddle, anymore than you can feel a force applied to your body when riding at steady velocity in a car or bus. You can walk from one side of a bus to the other as it cruises down a straight stretch of highway without bracing yourself against the forward motion that it gives you, but look how far down the highway you went as you made that crosswise trip! Your boat crossing the river does the same thing, but the additive effect of the current is much less dramatic because its speed is so much less. You can paddle at any angle across a huge river, whether that angle constitutes ferrying or not, and if all you could see was the water flowing by your hull, you'd have no idea which way the current was going (just like looking at the floor of the bus as you walk around in various directions as it cruises along. And don't be confused by lurching and velocity changes of the bus and how that affects your footing and the need to brace yourself. That's sort of like turbulence in a river, which can complicate things but doesn't affect the basic principle going on here). Same goes for if you were to drop a series of floating markers behind you and you looked back at them (they'd form a straight line directly behind your boat regardless of your heading relative to the direction of the current). These examples illustrate the straight-line travel of your boat through the water that supports it, regardless of whether that water happens to be moving as well, and regardless of the direction of that motion. You can observe this with the contrails of airliners too as they pass overhead in extremely strong crosswinds (the plane and the contrail both drift sideways together, indicating that even though the plane has a sideways component to its motion relative to the ground, it has no sideways component relative to the air that supports it).
This is that issue of frame of reference and relative motion again. It can be explained without examples, mathematically, but without starting a "book" along those lines, I'll suggest some additional food for thought. Consider the fact that if a boat's handling were affected in some discernible way as it moves through the water when there's steady current, why is it completely impossible for mariners on the ocean to detect current AT ALL until such time as they chart their progress by means of the sun and stars to find out what their course and speed have really been (or nowadays, by seeing what the GPS says about their true speed and direction of travel relative to their measured speed through the water and their compass heading)? Once you understand why this is so, you will understand what I've been trying to explain. I once knew an excellent physics teacher who had an absolutely superb method for illustrating this, but I can't get my chalk board onto P-net.
So put yourself on a really wide river and ONLY look down at the water as you paddle, and try to see a difference in what the water does as it goes by your boat and try to feel any difference, while you paddle at various headings.
So to cut thru it…
are you saying that being able to hold a certain angle to the current, or maintain a desired heading as you pass over it, is a waste of time or part of a successful ferry?
I am not being argumentative, but I truly cannot tell at this point. You keep returning to whether edging is relevant even after I indicated that the Pungo has poor control options for the paddler to hold a course in current, period. Flat or edged.
Granted said angle may have to change. There is a river mouth adjacent to where we stay on vacation, and we have come back across it adding 10 degrees then another 10 degrees etc when we were crossing at the height of an ebb tide. But the idea remains the same, it is just that the current changes enough to require a steeper angle as we hit its maximum flow in the middle of the channel.
I’ll try to make this very basic
– Last Updated: Jun-20-14 9:49 AM EST –
Read bignate's post about ferrying. He gets it. Basically, you need to look at where the current is going, and how that will affect your actual direction of travel when going at any crosswise angle to the current (the same principle applies to going straight upstream or straight downstream, but in that case, true travel speed is the only thing that changes, and that's a simpler situation). To cross a zone of current and achieve the proper true travel direction, you need to see that you will be *traveling through the water* in a particular direction but that that whole sheet of water is moving too. If you want to be really technically aware, you could even AIM at a particular spot on the water (imagine marking that spot with a free-floating buoy) and paddle straight toward it. If you could paddle straight toward a drifting buoy, you would get there while doing that you would see that you are going a straight line through the water that supports you (there'd be no need to "lead" the marker buoy). The trick is, aiming for the particular spot of moving water (imagine having a couple of dozen buoys in a row so that you could choose which one to aim for) that's the RIGHT spot, the one that will have drifted down to your target destination by the time you reach it. THAT's what choosing your ferry angle amounts to.
Yes, different current speeds will require different headings relative to the current direction to cross the flow going in a particular *true* travel direction, but if you understand the first paragraph, it's easy to see why. A faster current requires greater lead (you have to aim at a parcel of water that's farther upstream from your target destination). The same adjustments must be made to account for your own paddling speed, OR you can adjust your paddling speed to make it possible to cross at the angle of your choosing (a pro quarterback with a really strong arm doesn't need to "lead" a crosswise-running receiver as much a young kid who's throwing the same pass. That's not a truly analogous situation but the principle is the same). However, your own possible choices of paddling speeds covers a much smaller range than the range of current speeds you may encounter, so the main thing is current speed, and therefore the main thing you need to adjust is your heading relative to the current (your ferry angle).
This idea of aiming at a drifting parcel of water on the other side, ideally marked by a free-floating buoy, is just a visualization tool. In actual fact, what you will do to "choose the proper parcel of drifting water to aim at" is to take note of your true direction of travel while underway, and aim a little more upstream if you are getting downstream of your destination, and aim a little more downstream if you are making progress upriver during your crossing (that's assuming you really DO want to cross at a right angle, but of course other angles of crossing can be chosen). That brings up the point though, except for the jet ferry described below, you can't ferry directly across a current that has a speed which is faster than your maximum paddling speed. If the current is faster than you can paddle, you can ferry across, but your ferry angle will need to be pointed almost straight upstream and your true course will have a component of downstream drift.
All this talk so far is about steady current, and really wide rivers are the best places to test these ideas. If, while in steady current you needed to constantly edge your boat as you say, that would mean that the current is constantly pushing on your boat, but it's not. That can only happen if some outside force causes your boat to resist moving at the same speed as the current. It has to be an *outside* force (which is not possible to attain by pushing with your paddle against the same water that supports you). Wind can provide that force, and really strong winds can let you do some really crazy ferries in combination with a river's current (it's a blast - I did it once in my guide-boat in winds that were over 40 mph. A kayak would have far too little "sail area" to have done the same thing though). Wind is also the reason your boat will turn sideways to the wind when you drift freely, and in that case you are just crosswise to the direction that the wind is pushing you *through the water* that supports you. Canoers using poles create this outside force by connecting their boat to the river bottom with the pole, and again, the handling of the boat is completely different in certain ways than when the paddle is used.
On that note, here's a key thing to think about too. Old time *ferry barges* could maintain an angle that would propel them across the river in the manner that you refer to, but that was only because they were attached to a tight cable across the river via a rolling pulley connection. They could even adjust their speed to some extent by adjusting the angle (in a flawless, frictionless system, they could theoretically attain very high speed, but friction at the cable connection, high drag of the barge when moving forward, and the downstream sag in the cable actually made that impossible). In the absence of that cable to provide the outside force which makes the boat oppose the current, the ferry barge would simply drift downstream, still at its "ferry angle" but with that angle accomplishing nothing. This is the same reason that a kite flying in the wind will simply fall to earth if you cut its string. Even if the kite had an onboard gyroscope to maintain it's posture and proper angle of lift, it would simply fall to the ground without an outside force to oppose that of the wind. When crossing a wide river, your boat is like a ferry barge with no cable. Simply holding an angle accomplishes nothing.
The "jet ferry" I refer to is something that we all feel when suddenly entering a new zone of flow, and this is different. The boat has momentum, and that momentum causes the boat to resist drifting with the current when that new current is first encountered, and thus the current pushes on the boat. If the current is fast, it can be necessary to lean the boat just to keep the crosswise flow beneath the boat from flipping you, but that same crosswise flow is what lets you use the current as a propulsive force. The momentum of the boat plays the same role as the cable across the river for an old-time ferry barge, or the string that causes a kite to rise up from the ground. In extreme cases, you can really make your boat "take off" by maintaining the right ferry angle when first jumping into a zone of rapid current, but that effect rapidly fades away as the boat's momentum is overcome and its drifting speed increases to eventually match that of the current. Once drifting speed matches the current, you can keep ferrying, but only by the method described in the first paragraph, and at that point, you no longer need your edge because the water isn't pushing against the side of your boat anymore (at this point, your boat has become "a passenger on the bus" that I described in my earlier post). You are simply along for the ride, aiming for a spot within that path of moving water on the other side of the river that will arrive at your target destination at the same time you reach that chosen parcel of drifting water.
Too true…
we learn skills out of need and learn them best when there is a bit of risk in the endeavor.
The fine line is finding those situations where learning takes place and no injury ensues so that you learn the skill without the downside. It’s not easy to find that balance of risk vs. skill.
Example: I took a surf zone class when I’d been in a kayak for only a couple of hours. The waves were small (3 feet or so, but dumping). It was pretty much a lesson where you learned skills quickly or you learned how tasty pebbles marinated in Monterey Bay actually are and how heavy a boat filled with water actually is. I learned a lot about boat handling, but most of the others in the group were a bit beyond their skills and comfort level. I continued to learn skills while those that got pounded a few times learned that kayaking wasn’t for them.
Instructors, all paddlers, really, don’t always have the luxury of ideal training conditions. We often must live with the conditions we find on the day we paddle. With luck, this provides opportunities to learn without grossly exceeding one’s skill set, but conditions change and if the skill set doesn’t rise to the current conditions, bad things can happen in a hurry.
Rick
So - summary
– Last Updated: Jun-20-14 10:47 AM EST –
1) We agree on the need to be able to manage your angle for ferrying. That could have been said in fewer than four long paragraphs telling me how to something I already know how to do, but maybe it'll be useful someone else. And I have done jet ferries in tidal zones at river mouths and on a smaller, tighter river, albeit with a much lower percentage of perfection than I would like. I know what they are.
2) It appears that have more time actually sitting in a Pungo and working with unskilled paddlers in them than you do.
Missed the point on all counts
– Last Updated: Jun-22-14 1:41 PM EST –
1. How convenient to once again ignore what I said. I wasn't telling you how to pick your ferry angle. I was telling you why, that when crossing a current with which your boat is at equilibrium, edging accomplishes nothing, and I chose to do so by mapping out what's actually happening as you ferry across steady current. Go and really investigate that topic as to why operators of boats on the open ocean can't see any evidence of even the strongest of currents as they travel - don't just pretend it isn't true so you can keep talking the same line.
2. No, I haven't paddled Pungos, but I've paddled canoes in swiftwater that are far more cumbersome than a Pungo, and I'll stand by the idea that the simple maneuvers that have been mentioned in this thread can be done by anyone who knows how to paddle, in any boat, and very easily (just a bit slower is all). Along those lines, several rec-boat users in our local club have no trouble in Class-II stuff, simply because they see what the current is doing and are able to plan accordingly. Edging isn't in their vocabulary, but they can read the river and thereby choose the proper direction to end up on the correct path of travel. They are paddling in rapids that are FAR more complex than the escape-the-current situation desired by the OP, in spite of their use of non-specialized boats. Your whole premise (the one that started it all), that the situation described by the OP will be difficult to handle without edging, preferably in a whitewater boat, is simply ludicrous.
And now that you have made the Pungo thing into an insult, its clear that your level of talk is far above your level of real understanding (reminder: go back to to that open-ocean navigation situation again, and learn why it is what it is). I really can't believe you've spent much time paddling swiftwater rivers. Either that, or, just like the stuff that's been too far over your head to even grasp its relevance thus far, you aren't correctly interpreting the interaction of your boat and the water. I'm guessing it's the former, and I'm not the first one to think that. One other time, not that long ago, I tried to clarify when edging is needed and when it's not (not being at equilibrium with the current versus being at equilibrium), and after your reply totally ignored the pertinent aspects (I should have known better than to try even harder this time), I got an email from one of the very experienced whitewater paddlers here which was none too complimentary about your reply to me. I know you have a lot of open-water experience, but swift water? Not a chance.
Your urge to sound like an authority in spite of not remotely understanding what I said reminds me of the time not long ago when you similarly didn't understand a post by g2d/ezwater. In spite of the fact that he's one of the most knowledgeable canoe paddlers here, your response was to "explain" to him the purpose of a J-stroke.
Upstream ferry & edging; CFS
– Last Updated: Jun-20-14 6:38 PM EST –
I haven't been following the details of the GBG-Celia debate, but it has been suggested that an additional simple tactic for the OP would have been an upstream ferry.
That would, of course, require turning the Pungo at least about 120 degrees. I don't know how easily a Pungo spins, but any boat should spin around better in current (or in flatwater) with a downstream lean (=heel=edge). However, it's not clear that a nervous novice would be comfortable or safe attempting an edged or heeled turn in such big and powerful water.
For if the Black was over 7000 CFS that day, that is a huge and powerful amount of water for any boater. It would be much better for a novice to practice back ferries and upstream ferries, and other basic river moves, on no more than average flow levels in places without much gradient. Then, gradually over a season, kick it up notch by notch.