Surfski Knowledge Base

Reivers Dustin
02/02/09 #5761

Years ago LB, another guy in a Necky Phantom and I headed into the wind out of the Marina looking for a good time. Me and LB were in Vallhalla ski's. It kept getting rougher and somewhere between the GP Outfall buoy and Post Point buoy I dumped. Then the Phantom dumped and blew his roll (cockpit boat). This guy was amazing and climbed up from the back of the boat, into the cockpit and re-seated without getting water in the boat. He was known to do that in a K-1. This was all way before anyone knew what a leash was.

I was getting cold and spooked and graceously the other guys agreed to turn around. I dumped again on the turn. I started getting wobbly. As best I remember, twelve diving trips for ol' dunkin dustin here. The last dump prompted a little self talk. I knew there could not be any more of this and brought intense focus to stay in the middle of the boat. It worked and I made it in. I remember taking forever to change clothes and stow gear.

In those days we did our coffee after at Tony's. I got lost trying to find Tony's. I remember being surprised by a motorcycle. I suspect that my judgement was impaired. (Yes, more than usual everyone.) When I talked with the guys after finding Tony's, I told them what was happening.

We learn.

RD

Re: Dunkin Dustin
kathleen petereit
02/02/09 #5763

When your cognitive thinking becomes impaired it is a sign of hypothermia. Not sure what it is in Reiver's case though.

Kathleen

One comment from a parallel discussion at the time about cold water immersion studies

Re: [mipp] hypothermia
Erik Borgnes
02/27/09 #5906

One thing that surprised me in this article was the core temp difference between the two swimmers:
“When just sitting in 16 C water the rectal temperature of both men fell, but after approximately 80 min Zirganos was sitting a full one degree higher than Pugh. The more dramatic difference was when swimming in the same water, though. Zirganos was able to maintain his temperature at around 38 C for nearly two hours while Pugh's temperature began to plummet after just 30 min until he exited the water after about 70 min, when his temperature was less than 34 C.

This early research from the 1950's pioneered this area of physiology, and today we have a substantial body of evidence that demonstrates both the effects of cold-water immersion and how we adapt to this stress.”

Completely obvious is that fat insulates. Seals, whales, etc have inches or feet of thickness of fat for insulation. The different insulating properties of the skinny guy's 1? cm or so of fat to the fatter guy's 2 or 3? cm of fat doesn't seem like much. But, the skinny guy's core was way below that of the fatter guy's. I suppose that it was due to the combination of being fatter and conditioned to cold water swimming. Skinny guys really need those wetsuits, and we all need to spend some time in cold water.

Erik