1. Kick the life guards ass for laughing at your stupidity.
2. Smile and remember the lesson
Your question was: how to stay attached to the boat.
In the circumsatance you we in, you should swim to the kayak, turn it upright, grab the stern handle and slowly swim towards shore. NOTE: Always stay up river of the boat.
I don't know why you swam to shore without it. Did you think there was valet service? And what happened to the paddle? Did you let it go also?
Warning: Use your brain before you use your paddle. Luckily you got off easy. Hope you learned a valuable lesson.
Now what you should do (and I'm being serious) is to take someone with you and go back and do the chute at least 6 times in a row. Do it without a skirt. This sounds like a great place to learn. After a couple of dumps you'll start realizing what you are doing wrong and at the same time you'll learn some self rscue. Station your buddy downriver enough for you to practice and use him as a last resort. You won't get practical experience from a book.
What are you still reading for? I've given you enough advice. Grab you boat/paddle and go. If you aren't a good swimmer take a PFD, it will make the "God's of Safety" happy.
leave the boat upside down If you are swimming in a wave train with an upsidedown boat, leave it upside down. Don’t waste time turning it right side up if it is upside down, and don’t waste time turning it upside down if it is right side up. An upside down boat is usually at equilibrium and will not take on more water than it already has. A right side up boat may well ship more water going through a wave train. The amount of drag the boat has on a swimmer right side up or upside down is not significant in my experience. For a whiterwater canoe with floatation, the upside down boat may actually ride higher in the water and have less drag, again, in my experience. Unless you are ready to empty the boat and get back in, there really isn’t any reason to turn it over. In fact, for a kayak in the middle of a wide pool, rentry and rolling may be the best option.
Foam First, big foamy waves at the bottom of a chute indicate heavily aerated water and will not move a hull along but will instead stop it dead in its tracks. A sudden stop usually results in the hull rolling to a side and filling up with water. This is what happened to you. The remedy is to get enough speed to get past the foam. You did not paddle hard enough before arriving at the foam.
Second, when you turn over, surface and reconnoiter to find your hull and make sure your head is not between it and a downstream rock, and hold on to your hull and paddle unless you are injured or too weak to save both. Keep your feet upstrream and try to get yourself and hull into an eddy.
Sounds like… You did well not to hit the sides of that thing. The skirt, if nylon, may not stay on too well once you aqre upside down or on your way over. But it would be helpful up to that point.
And if it’s hot a swim w/o complications isn’t such a bad thing.
What about the drinks? My question is what happened to the food and drink part of the story? Was evverything tossed overboard? Recovered? Safe or soggy?
The Comal River is actually a pretty river, but it’s very small…only about 2-1/2 miles long… starting and ending all within the city of New Braunfels. The headwaters come from a small spring, and it empties into the Guadalupe. Yes,the area is developed, but the water is clear and clean. This particular area has been a city park and swimming hole for a very long time, and it is definitely not a wilderness experience, but it was a fun, family place to go until it got so crowded. It doesn’t all look like the tube chute area.
Like, I've done it, but I think everyone is getting seriously overwrought here.
OBVIOUSLY you don't leave the leg in its original position - I didn't think that was necessary to say to grups. You just don't fully extract it either until you have something resembling another grip on the boat. I can lay on my back with a leg in the boat while it is upside down (and need I say that the leg is also facing upward?) - I've seen any number of people do just this while they are putting on their paddle float. It is not exactly revolutionary. It is a better manuver in calm big water than quickly moving stuff, if for no other reason than that the boat is more likely to stay put since all that is holding it is the weight of the leg. And the boat is upside down too of course.
From what I can tell, the only WW equivalent section of this chute was the chute and the foam at the end itself. According to someone who has run it, there is an area of calm water at the end where there are no shallow rocks and the conditions emulate a slow moving river or even a pond again. It is also unclear whether the paddler made it most of the way thru the foam at the bottom or lost it right off.
Hooking the leg Part II.I As an experienced (whatever that means) sea kayaker, let me second Celia’s recommendation regarding the leg hook.
As she says, this is a well-known and common technique, taught both in many SK books and by the instructors and teachers with whom I’ve paddled. It works very well on calm and flat water, as well as in non-breaking waves of up to perhaps three feet. As Celia states, it frees the ejected paddler’s hands for affixing a paddle float, fetching stray gear from the water, aiding another swimmer, and also keeps the boat in the recommended inverted position (to avoid taking on more water).
Speaking with little to no WW experience, I cannot say whether this is a good idea for very turbulent river water with rocks and other hazards, but judging from the posted photos of the site in question I would recommend it in this case. In fact, assuming no other swimmers in the area who could be injured by ones boat, this exit pool looks like a fun place for a beginning sea- or crossover-kayaker to bail out and practice various re-entry techniques in moving water.
If you haven’t yet tried it, the hooked leg can quickly and easily be withdrawn from the cockpit if necessary, even on fairly heavily textured water, assuming you’re not wearing strapped sandals, loosely-tied sneakers, or other ill-advised footwear which can snag on pedals. But that’s always true.
The leg hook is a valuable technique, and I think would be appropriate for this case and for other, textured flatwater situations.
to be clear… When I ran it last week, the levels were 2-3 feet higher than normal. There was no still water at the end of the chute (normally there is)and the whole area was moving along at about 2 knots. I was ejected in the foam, boat ended up scooting along a concrete wall with me about 30 feet behind it trying to catch up. There are concrete walls lining this whole area, maybe 1 foot higher than the water, not normal sloped river banks. Other than a couple of ladders to climb out, you are stuck in the moving water. I eventually pinned the boat and myself against some concrete steps so I could re-enter the boat, still in some current.
I would imagine this place to be fairly docile had the flow rate been closer to normal. The entire Guadalupe River was closed due to flood stage levels.
The Comal is a very slow float. 2 miles in 2 hours. I brought my yak so I could paddle upstream a mile to explore.
Nothing… left the boat except my hat! I had everything stowed in the bulkhead or float bagged behind the seat. This boat is stuff so full of foam it probably floats too well upside down.
In that case I doubt it would have been prudent to try to stay attached to the boat in any fashion. Even the rear toggle would be a risk because it could have twisted. (WW boats have stiff low profile handles rather than toggle loops for that reason). And a rope could have strained the heck out of your shoulder. In a more normal water level, the story could be different. The factor of other boaters or tubers is always messy.
As I said in my first post, conditions are a factor. It’s a good habit to practice staying with your boat where possible, but judgement is still involved.
re: leg hook For flat water and gentle current I’m sure it is fine. I have never tried to keep a leg hooked in a whitewater kayak I have tried to exit, but I have involuntarily had a leg “hooked” in a kayak, or more commonly a whitewater canoe, that I wasn’t able to exit cleanly and I can say from experience that it isn’t something you want to strive to do in anything beyond gentle whitewater. A big boat full of water in a hole, or going through a big wave train gets torqued and around suddenly, violently, and unpredictably perhaps more quickly than you can disengage your leg and it takes only a split second to dislocate a knee or tear a meniscus. I have had a significant knee injury in just this way when one leg momentarily hung up in my canoe thigh strap during on upset going through the large set of waves at Double Trouble on the Ocoee first time down.
A better way might be to wet exit without letting go of the boat. Then stick a leg into the cockpit like Celia said. It’s not really “hooked” on anything, it’s just in there with your toes under the thigh hooks to keep the boat with you.
Nothing to catch your leg or twist if the boat moves. Celia’s technique not only works, but is taught by just about every sea kayak instructor that I know.
