We had the long sea kayak safety discussion the other day, and since then I’ve started looking up and reading various accident reports online. I recently read this one from Sea Kayaker magazine, which has a number of good lessons in it. However, I also came to some conclusions not in the article, and I was curious what other posters thought.
http://www.seakayakermag.com/2006/Aug06/Luhm01.htm
Basically, a group of 6 set out on a “class IV-V” trip with one weak paddler and a strong paddler nursing an injury. The ultimate result was 3 capsizes and a holed boat. They recovered with some difficulty and made their way to a safe beach, rested for a couple hours, and then went on to complete the trip.
My main disagreement safety-wise is that, once they had recovered and rested, they decided to go on with the trip. The only justification given was the idea that the weak paddler should “get back on the horse” after being thrown. But they were still very near the beginning point, maybe 2-3 miles into an 18-mile round trip. The weak paddler had had her confidence shattered and had discovered that she was prone to seasickness, while the injured expert paddler had had his injury aggravated. It seems to me that, at a minimum, the two of them should have returned, because their presence endangered the whole group.
What’s more, it appears that the group leader was the main motivating force behind the decision for the weak paddler to go on – she was reluctant, and he encouraged her. Although she completed it successfully, her opinion of the wisdom of that decision might be reflected in the fact that she has not been on any similar trip since then, according to the story. And the injured paddler, who is the narrator of the story, apparently never even considered turning back.
By the way, the place they went, Olympia Natl Park, is GORGEOUS. Look it up on Google Earth and look at some of the photos.
She should not have been on the trip.
Limited experience in surf … discovers she is prone to seasickness … open coast in Washington …
18 mile trip on exposed coast is not where she should have been.
Dumb.
sea kayak?
It sounds like this was a whitewater run. If so then surely they were not in sea kayaks? The decision for they weak paddlers to go on sounds questionable but then its hard to no the circumstances without having been there.
My bad
after re-reading I guess I mistook the class 4 or 5 label as whitewater but I guess it can be a designation for general difficulty.
But Real SeaKayakers Need…
rescue bait to prove they are the real and that the trip was an adventure. 
Some of us already have more than two hands full worrying about ourselves.
sing
Sounds more like class II to me see…
Headed out to play with the Class V surf dogs tomorrow. (See if I dare paddle out.)
Control Freaks - S and M types?
What’s with these people who designate themselves as trip leaders to do stupid stuff like this?
Reminds me of the Town Cop where I grew up …
Some thoughts
La Push can offer some absolutely magnificent paddling. We’ve done the La Push to Toleak Pt and beyond trip a few times. However, it is a forecast dependent trip if there ever was one. You need to treat it like a river bar because, in effect, you are usually entering the ocean via the Quilieute river. There is extensive shoaling due to sedimentation from the river and the water off of First Beach is often rougher than other places. The swell finds bottom in many places in the bay and the seas are sharper. Once across you can rock garden in the Quilieute Needles and hop along the coast til you get to Toleak.
The site of their train wreck is like a point break in certain sea states. I often use the Needles, offshore from there, to mute the swell in many sea states and don’t get to close to that place. Taking a group through there is pretty risky as most sets will wind up and bowl over those that aren’t looking to seaward enough. Once beyond there, in some sea states you can find places to dodge the heavier conditions. It’s not for the faint of heart and you better have a solid grasp of ocean kayaking.
Club trips sometimes have members that would not otherwise be there if it were not for a group structure. They see a trip posted, would love to go and then talk to the trip leader. Some of you bristle about club trips and the concept of leaders, a perfectly acceptable opinion, however, when the shit hits the fan you want someone who is going to get things done and that is often the role of the leader. The one who would not otherwise be there can pick a strong group to go along if they feel they would like backup to their skill set. A quarterback cannot defeat the opposite team on his/her own, can they? No, he is part of the team. In whitewater, individuals get down rapids just as in sea kayaking individuals make crossings and so forth. However, more skilled members probe the rapid, set safety and define the lines of the rapid. It happens all the time. Someone wants to improve their skillset and they take a trip with a stronger group.
Washington Kayak Club operates on that trip format, a leader and trip participants. So does the Mountaineers, another WA state based outdoor group. They all rate trips, unfortunately, on the whitewater model of grade 1-5. I think ww and sk have cross skill potentials but they are completely different sports. A class 5 river is nothing like “class 5” ocean conditions. The trips are rated on potential, not what they actually are. I’ve been there with 3 foot swell, no wind and no current out of the Quilieute, is it still class 5? The risk, in my opinion, is you get people who think, “class 3, no problem.” Conditions change and they get mowed over like spring grass from a reaper. Or, “Oh my, class 5!” Then they are tense and performing in a tense manner.
So by now you know that I know a little more than what’s in the article. I do, as I’m friends with a few of the guys, however, I wasn’t there that day. Although I quibble with some of the methods, they all came back.
Dogmaticus
Memphis, many insist it does not matter
but the guidelines suggest this and other accident reports have a happier home on the Discussion Forum. It’s really a stretch to see how it fits the guideline for “Advice, Suggestions, and General Help.” Or are you suggesting we all go out and have an accident?
I read that they had
discussed several options, including turning back, and that no one pressured her to continue on. They even brought up a couple options for getting those not wanting to continue back. They decided they had mishandled the situation, and started off on one heck of a note. But I imagine once removed from the situation, they could all think about their 3 day campout and planned paddles in quite realistic terms. It ocurred close to shore. They were close to safety. They were only traveling 9 miles away in total, and staying for a couple days. I probably wouldn’t have seen it as that traumatic of an event either, considering those present didn’t all decide that it was.
giant graveyard camping?
Dogmatycus, I envy you having that area as your home turf. Let me ask you, is it possible to climb and camp on any of those offshore rocks? The higher ones with the forest coverings, I mean. I realize you would risk getting trapped by the weather out there, but if you’re 50 feet up and have enough food/water, you should be safe staying put, and it would be absolutely awesome to ride out a storm in such a place.
Oh, well, I guess the park probably has rules against it anyway.
Marine rez rules forbid that. Ahem…
so we don’t distoib the birdies and sea otters and other critters that call those rocks home. Not that it isn’t awfully tempting to take a peak. There are rangers on the coast with big old binoculars to keep us honest.
To a point made above, there is a pretty well developed trail system in the area that could evac someone not committed to paddle out. The boat would have to be towed to the shortest trail to road, though. It is a very committing place to paddle, however, there are some options. As Salty likes to say, nature bats last.
Dogmaticus
group leader dynamic
Dogmatycus below does a good job describing the club trip/group leader thing, I think. To expand on that a little (and he may disagree with my expansion, these are just my thoughts), I think it is a natural impulse (and a good thing) for people who love a sport to want to share that love by helping others experience it. And there is a tendency to allow a weak paddler to come along with a strong group under the theory that the group can help this person make it, whereas it wouldn't be prudent for that person to even attempt it with a group of his peers. This is especially true when the weak paddler is a friend and is "liked" by several people in the group. Again, I think this is natural and, to some extent, a good thing.
And yes, you are correct (in a way) that it is a "macho" thing, a town cop king of thing, a "look at me I can carry other people on my back" kind of thing. In a way. But it is also a very generous kind of thing - the exact opposite of the sentiment several people expressed in the last thread by saying "never go paddling with people who can get you killed".
If I look back at my own outdoors/paddling career, it was this type of person and these types of experiences that helped jump-start my own skills. When growing up, I was lucky to have such a "macho/show-off" living across the street from me, who was 2 years older than me. So, between the ages of 8-12, I did lots of outdoors stuff that was over my head, but he was always nearby to pull me out when I got in trouble. Likewise, at a much later age (late 20s), I hooked up with various people who did the same in regard to paddling.
So, on balance, I admire the group leader impulse, even if it is "macho" and "show off" - and for the same reasons (and with similar reservations) that I admire town cops.
However, there is a catch. (continued next post)
sounds to me like it fits here
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It can easil devolve to the "macho"
thing. I do my best to avoid the “see and be seen” crowd. I paddle because I want to explore the marine wilderness and the canyons with those wonderful rivers, not to “lead” trips and be the self appointed conduit to the kinds of experiences that can truly be life changing for the better. But let’s face it, in difficult venues the backup to an individual with the proper skillset matched to the venue is a few tested paddlers who don’t mind setting safety. It happens in alot of sports. There is a first time for everything and if someone has a reasonable skill set for the venue and there is sufficient backup, then it isn’t a stretch to have them along. It certainly is nothing to put our heads in the clouds over. It’s just paddling. So I think we agree.
Dogmaticus
contd…
Oops, on reading my last post again, I realize I failed to make my point clear, so I edited out the last paragraph. This is what I meant to say:
However, there is a catch – the entire group has the right to know about the potentially weak paddler, and to opt out if they don’t want to take on the burden. It’s not enough simply to say they don’t want to share responsibility – in the present example, the injured paddler tried to say in advance that he could not participate in rescues due to his injury, but when the events happened he was in the middle of it and obviously could not refuse to do his part. As it turned out, his actions only made things worse, thanks to his injury.
Further, the group leader has a duty to manage the group’s responsibility to the weak paddler in a way that doesn’t unduly endanger the group. He must constantly reevaluate this factor as conditions change, and he should take extra duties upon himself to give extra help to the weak paddler in order to spare the group. In the present case, he does this by giving Judy a swim-assist to launch through the surf, for example. I expect he also stayed close by her for the remainder of the trip. However, in my opinion, he probably should have let her walk back to the marina when she was inclined to do so. True, this is a judgment call, and he was on the spot while I’m not, so it’s possible he made the right decision. But I don’t think so.
The fact that they made it back all right is irrelevant. That only means that fortune favored them. The key factor to me is Judy’s seasickness. That means that her lack of paddling skill was not just something minor like not having enough surfing practice. It means she had never been out in 3-foot waves for any length of time, or she would have known she was prone to seasickness. (Also, why didn’t anybody have any Dramamine? Shouldn’t that be standard in a sea kayaker first aid kit?) If she were to become incapacitated by seasickness, and the weather worsened, and one or two of dozens of other possible bad things happened, the result could have been tragedy.
My question is
they had three paddlers who didn’t want to go into the surf–one, the author, was nursing a sore shoulder, one was seasick and the third didn’t feel experienced enough to want to surf—yet they went into the area between the island and the beach where they knew they would be surfing—did the people who didn’t want to go there tell the leaders that? If not, why not and if they did tell why did the leaders chose that route when they could have gone to the seaward side of the island and avoided the surf zone? Just a question—
when I go out with the group I usually paddle with, MDI Paddlers if one person voices any doubts about a certain route then we change it—if we want to try a tougher route later we agree on it in advance, and the other paddlers who don’t want to go there can stay on the beach or go for a different paddle.
Given where they wrecked, the area
just south of there is moderately protected in some sea staes by the Needles. She could have walked from there once ashore on the trail system. That beach is nothing like First Beach. Google “La Push Pummel.” The hardest bit in the conditions of that area they had done.
Around a headland south of them, that also has a sneak route, is another wider bay fronting Third Beach which also has some protection in some sea states. One can hopscotch around that to end at Toleak and be in water that is not as rough as outside the Needles and Giants Graveyard. (Caveat: all bets are off in certain sea states. I think this area is about as forecast dependent as it gets, quite dodgy.)
The biggest mistake they made was getting too close to the big rock and let wraparound surf mow them over. They could have been offshore and the story not even written. Once the train wreck was sorted out and the boat patched they made a judgement call: if she can make it off the beach she can most likely make it the rest of the way. The landing at Toleak in the conditions they had would be non-surf. Storms change that, but in the conditions they had they had really only one headland to get around and that has a fun sneak route that makes it easy.
Lots of folks carry ginger, dramamine and advise that they consult their physicians regarding transdermal patches. Sea sickness is a bitch and some people don’t know they are susceptible until race day. Some forget. It’s a part of alot of trip leaders spiels around here. As far as the potential for tragedy, ya, it does exist. The likelyhood of that exists, however, see my comments above regarding where they were and you could probably arrive at why they made the decision they did. I was on the water to the north of them that weekend along Cape Flattery and conditions weren’t a big deal, 4-6 feet and the forecast was holding.
Now, there is a coast guard station right at the mouth of the Quilieute river if everybody pops the deck and can’t get to shore, but we don’t like to model that in to our contingency plans, do we? ; )
This thread is interesting when we consider it in light of the “real sea kayaker and the roll” thread. Lots of stuff happens when you pop that deck.
Dogmaticus
The leader was playing catch up
just before the wreck as he stopped to do something. The rest were just paddling and probably not aware. Good rock gardening means anticipating this. Bad rock gardening means you get smoked. That paddle can be done without any surfing as we exit and reenter a river mouth. Often the beach at Toleak doesn’t have any surf in times of low swell. But at other times it’s a bitch getting out of the river and back in when there is current. Once I had to surf standing waves to get back in when the spring runoff was smokin.
Google “Washington shoreline aerial photography.” The state has shorline imagery of 1:50,000 resolution that is oh so nice to plan sea kayak trips with. Tab onto the pix south of James Island.
Dogmaticus
Shoreline imagery
http://apps.ecy.wa.gov/shorephotos/scripts/bigphoto.asp?id=CLA0625
Clicking on the left takes you to La Push. Clicking to the right takes you down to Toleak. The image I selected is right about where it happened.
Dogmaticus