Well to be 100% honest I also go by myself 9 times in 10. But that’s because I go out 4-5 times a week and all my potential paddling partners live miles from me and I live 8 miles from the water. So getting out on the water 30 minutes before it’s light and enjoying the sunrises is a regular habit for me and none of my friends with kayaks live close enough to go with me every morning. I go out most mornings and get back by 9:30 AM to start my work. I paddle with friends probably 20-30 days a year, but I go out myself an average of 4 days a week from Mid April to near the end of November. So I am on the water maybe 100 days a year (last years I did 5 days a week most weeks) and I don’t think I’ll stay home because my friends can’t go with me the 80 days I can go that they can’t.
All that said, I am still convinced going with partners IS probably safer.
Hear what you’re saying but despite being safer in numbers, you don’t factor that into your decision to paddle on a given day. You would never select a novice to accompany you for safety, so safety is related to accompanying some of equal or greater skill. You wouldn’t feel any safer with me paddling with you because I’d be a liability, not an asset. At the same time, I wouldn’t be safer with you, because I’m not prepared to face the conditions that you encounter with unexpected winds and storms. When you’re in a single seat kayak, youvare the one that counts. If you can only paddle at 3.5 mph and hit a meager 3 mph current, then have to go into a 20 mph headwind for 10 miles to get home, that 3 hour return trip suddenly turns into a long time. Even if you paddle close to the hull at .5 mph, if you increase your speed to 1 mph, you will probably only last 30 minutes before you bonk. Now if you are with that person, you are both in danger, not safer. If you can’t rely on yourself, don’t feel safe because you have numbers around you - all that does is endanger innocent, unsuspecting people. Few people.will admit that they’re the weakest link, so when everyone wants to extend the 20 mile trip to circumnavigate the island rather than return, that can be a disaster for everybody.
All good points.
I have been lucky so far. I have had to get combative with the wind a few times and 2 times I lost the fight and had to give my stern to the waves and wind and just let it blow me to shore, but those times I was only waiting out the high winds for about 20-30 minutes before it laid down to a point I could go again. However my friend Bret was not so lucky.
He was a 20 year paddler from Northern California and figured that the Pacific had shown him all he could ever see and he said he was 100% sure he was OK on a small mountain lake. That proved to be wrong. We had a late spring wind drop down the slopes and it blew him to the other side, about 3 miles from his camp, and he had to wait 9 hours before the winds and waves let him get back. I asked him why he didn’t just call me and I’d have come with my 4WD and pickled him up and driven him all the way around the lake back to his camp. He said he was giving consideration to doing exactly that but as he was about to, the wind dropped down to about 1/3 of it’s speed that kept him on the steep rocks for that 9 hours. He’s a believe in wind shears now.
Knowing where they come from, if there is any movement in those directions I always drive to a launch point now that puts my nose going towards the mountains and in the cases the wind fought me to a standstill I just turn around and let it blow me home (well ----- most times anyway. 3 times now I have had it do a 180 on me and so I paddled hard into the winds to the turn around point and then ended up paddling hard against it to get back. My friends seemed to think it was funny when it happened. Somehow I missed the joke)
Good thinking, for sure. Those who’ve not experienced the Chinooks (or whatever they’re called in other downslope regions) have a hard time imagining how fast they can blow up to gale-force.
True. 2 kinds come in, those that go “sky-high” and those that sweep in and are lifted over the mountains by the winds. The second is the one that you need to know about when boating in the mountains. If the storm has cloud ceilings of 25,000 to 45,000 feet we can see them coming over the mountains when they are still 150 miles away. But those that come in low are blocked from your sight until they come over the tops. When you see them come over the tops of the north or west ranges and you realize that ridge is only 10 miles from you and the winds are 50-70 MPH you have about 1 minute per mile before they are on you. I have been on the wide north end of the lake a few times and seen what looks like a wave dropping down the face of the mountains coming right at me and I was about 3 miles away from the nearest shore line. When that happens I know I’ll be in the teeth of the wind in about 5 to maybe 8 minutes. There is no way I can paddle my kayak 3 miles in 8 minutes.
So keeping watch of the weather for the day on the internet before I leave is a good thing to do. It’s not always accurate, but it does help. If I know storms can be coming in, and from which direction, I try to make sure I will be between my truck and the storm’s direction of arrival. And I have launch places all around the lake. Then if it’s a bad one I can turn toward my truck and the wind is helping me get there faster. Bracing skills are no joke in those times, but if you are able to manage them well, the storm “blows you home”.
Anna and I learned in our first 2-3 months of kayaking that having to try to overcome stiff wind and waves to get back to the truck is a real workout and every now and the it’s bad enough that I just can’t do it, and have to go to shore.
But these low to ground winds don’t last like the big tall ones do. If I need to go to shore I just go. Any place I can. Inside an hour and sometimes just 20 minutes the bad part is usually past and then I can get back in my kayak and go on.
I am most afraid of being caught up in the hive mind of a group. I’ve seen it over and over in diving, the “trust me” dive. Every once in awhile I get tempted by a group in order to learn and then I see something alarming that I can’t live with. Often it’s people’s lack of fitness or drinking habits.
The average attitude towards health is usually what stops me from wanting to rely on others. For sure, it’s an ableist mindset and I’m curious how it evolves as I age.
Thank God for forums like this because that’s the only place I learn anything except for my own trial and error experience.
I don’t mind paddling in groups because at the end of the day I make my own decisions any way. As I said above, it is a lot harder for me to make good decisions as an inexperienced sea kayaker than as more experienced flatwater/whitewater paddler. A good group can help with that. I guess if I was gullible a bad group could make it worse, but I don’t think I am that gullible - at least I hope not.
By helping and sharing, you l should learn as much as you give. Articulating helps organize thoughts. The process not only reinforces your knowledge, but it can expose inconsistencies that require research. The exchange should be symbiotic. Especially disagreements offer an opportunity to expand your knowledge base.
I’m the weak link! The who, when, and where all matter. Make your own decisions and live by them. It is quite possible to do that and still do group paddles. I’ve had a great time with a number of pnetters, facebook folks, and random strangers. If I need support I’m quick to communicate it and conversely provide a helping hand, but usually ask first to see if help is wanted before providing help. Really important with whitewater to clearly communicate your concerns, strengths, weaknesses when paddling with unfamiliar faces. You need to have “the talk” prior to hitting the water.
Great plan. Depener sods on the goal. I prefer solo because of as far or as long as you desire, with no interruptions or concerns about peripheral issues like skill level if conditions change. My sister was a good paddling partner, as long as she accompanied me on all trips from the start of a season, which allowed us to condition ourselves together. That way there was only about a .3 mph difference in trip avg speed which isn’t significant, because I could always power paddle out a short distance, loop, zig-zag or divert on a side exploration if I wanted a greater challenge. If she missed a few trips, her pace would fall about 1 mph behind, so I made those exploration trips to sakt marshes whenever the tide was high enough.
The primary issue was she never learned to track straight or navigate effevtively and would occasionally diver as much as one to three hundred yards off course. I always carry a chart and the GPS, but showing her the channel marker she passed next to or the GPS track could never convince herbtyst she was off track, which made me anxious if she mentioned a solo trip or going out with an inexperienced paddler.
I understand the social aspect of kayaking and fully embrace the concept, but that isn’t the reason I kayak. My preferred group size is one other person, because groups of three usually devolve into no more than two anyway. Going with a group of like-minded paddlers with similar skills would be welcomed, but I don’t have links to such paddlers except for one other paddler two hours away.
If somebody already pointed this out, forgive me. It’s not entirely accurate to say that paddling with someone who is less experienced than you doesn’t make you safer. It’s not all about skills. If you have a medical event, having another person to call for help and/or hold your head above water could save your life. I usually paddle alone but with the awareness that it comes with some inherent risks that would be mitigated by being in a group.
Not sure if it has been pointed out, but it’s definitely a salient point. Yet many people live and travel alone, hike alone, Intentionally climb sheear rock faces without belaying. @MojaveFlyer is extremely safety conscious, yet she once pointed out the need for controlled risk and explained how Europeans don’t share the same concerns over wearing a PFD as many of us do here in.
No doubt partnering while paddling is the prudent thing to do. I know it isn’t the same as kayaking, but my wife leaves me at home unattended for may hours. On those occasions, I’m cautious don’t lean too far back in a chair, especially if close to a wall, and I don’t wstch Last of the Mohicans because I can become very animated during certain scenes. One time a friend and I ran through the PawPaw Tunnel on the C&O Canal, at night, without flashlight, with our eyes close which was probably irrelevant (the only point of reference is the arch of light 3/5th mile away that represents the other side of the tunnel, and that only exists by aid of the moon). Ok, not dangerous, but a sensory rush as you listened to the echo off the wall to gauge your proximity between the railing on the canal side and the brick wall of the tunnel. We need some kind of rush the bring living closer.
I’ll be 73 this month, and the one rush I have is managing to go maybe .3 to .5 mph faster in my yak. Eh! If I’m worrying about an event . . . Maybe I’ll just paddle without a PFD for the ultimate rush.
Excellent point and absolutely true. It is a concern thst should be a part of the equation, but I stay home to be safe. I get tired of sitting here. If I wanted to do something really scary, I’d walk around downtown with $20 bills partially hanging from my coat and a .25 cal semi-auto in my pocket. That would be less safe but more exciting than a solo paddle, so I paddle because I do occasionally like the solitude of open water.
I think we test, then push the envelope. The question is probably do you wantvto livevs long time or do you just rather it seem like a long time. Sometimes we got to feel free . . .
I know a former Marine that works Search and Rescue up in Garmisch and we were discussing how nobody wears life jackets and he told me that he has worked there ten years and doesn’t know of anybody drowning.
That same weekend they found two dead frozen bodies at the adjacent ski slopes. They were skiers that went over the side in separate incidents and were not found for a few weeks. He says that is very routine although I haven’t seen any data.
The only reason I mention it is because it seems to me that maybe people without life jackets act more cautiously and stay within their swimming distance abilities. It’s not about advocating for not wearing them as much as observing a behavioral difference. Maybe they are less prone to drinking before being on the water, confounders like that.
Also I am reminded that when I lived in Hawaii if I recall correctly, we had some 90 or so pedestrians hit by cars and they were almost all pedestrians on crosswalks.
I am attempting to describe the inverse of the “high risk cockpit” of an airplane.
(Cont) I am trying to find the definition of “high risk cockpit” because I’ve only heard it from pilots talking about crashes like when the Japanese pilots hit the jetty (SF) all watching the autopilot. (Asiana Flight 214)
Also, it’s what killed my flight instructor. They had three instrument rated expert flight instructors in the plane and made the poor call to scud run under the clouds leaving a lake in Idaho. They flew directly into a mountain and all burned to death. It’s the over confidence of group think.
I’m on a tangent BUT I am reminded that safety outcomes are often counterintuitive:
Danish study shows higher speed limits are safer
A two-year experiment by the Danish road directorate shows accidents have fallen on single-carriageway rural roads and motorways where the speed limit was raised. Since the speed limit on some stretches of two-way rural roads was increased from 80 to 90 km/h, accidents have decreased due to a reduction in the speed differential between the slowest and fastest cars, resulting in less overtaking.
Another example would be lane-splitting by motorcycles in states like California.
