Larry Goolsby
12/22/07 #3919
Thia story is a great example on why we need to practice rescue skills, even if it is just rescuing ourselves. Erik B. emailed me over a month ago about doing a swim (New Year's day?) in order to test how our drysuits/wetsuits will protect us against the cold. I have been trying to think of how we could do some sort of race (swimming?) and this recent rescue has given me an idea. What if we did a race on the bay going from point A to Point B with one person in a surfski and another in a drysuit? We could drop a buoy off of Marine park and have teams of two. You would leave the beach with your 'swimmer' and do the best to drag them out to the buoy and back again. Maybe we could con Dale into bringing her Zodiac out just in case we need assistance. New Year's is 10 days away, any takers? Any better ideas?
LG
New Year's Day Swim/Paddle…………
Larry Goolsby
12/23/07 #3925
All right, it sounds like we need to do this. On New Year's day, the highest tide is between 10 am and noon so in order to allow a couple of the late nighters to sleep in, let's do this at 10 am. If you don't have a drysuit, you can be a paddler (you can do the swim in a wetsuit). I'll bring a buoy that we can anchor about 50-100 yards off shore and come up with a prize for the winning team. A LeMans style start would be nice followed by each team paddling/dragging themselves out around the buoy and back. Outriggers would be welcome…..
LG
New Year Days race
kathleen petereit
12/26/07 #3941
Larry G,
Seeing as your are head coach and owner of the the BCKC facilities, for your New Year Day race I thought in order for everyone to get the towing experience, once you get to the bouy you should have the paddler dump and have swimmer mount and tow back. Although at this point swimmer may be unable to grip the paddle.
Hmmmmmm might be a lot of new drysuits out on that day ??????
With the exception of Heather and Brandon. Baby HB may not appreciate this manoeuver and would probably want mom to stay in the boat ! Hope you have a photographer there….
:) Kathleen
Re: New Year Days race
Larry Goolsby
12/27/07 #3942
Kathleen…..Switching off at the buoy has already been a point to ponder. The only problem is some paddlers might be significantly different from each other: wide seat vs. narrow seat, left hand feather vs. right hand feather, long legs (Brandon) vs. short legs (everyone else). We'll have to see who shows up and decide what kind of rules we need in order to complicate things. I have accumulated a box-o-beer (that oughta get the Canadians down here) for the winning team. This could be fun if it wasn't in the middle of winter.
Larry G.
— In whatcompaddlers@…, “island_hukigirl”
<island_hukigirl@…> wrote:
Larry G
Re: New Year Days race
Reivers Dustin
12/27/07 #3943
A good thing to put out here up-front is that quitting is a great option. It's counter to a lot of programming. For instance go there and decide that the water looks funny. Or whatever.
Reading about Kathleen's experimental work makes me think hard about setting the buoy as the turning mark. (I'm planing to be one of the swimmers.)
Hopefully we'll get some extra paddlers to just do the route without draging a body around so we have some back-up guys. And now that I think of it, I remember Brian B in his outrigger getting my daughter out of a jam on a Wednesday nighter a few years ago. Can we get any outrigger paddlers into this?
RD
Sea Kayaker Magazine…
Brandon Nelson <brandon@…>
12/28/07 #3944
We just got the February ’08 issue of Sea Kayaker Magazine In yesterday’s mail, and after flipping through it to browse the articles, I was struck by how timely and ironic the subject matter is with all that the group has been experiencing and talking about lately.
First, there’s a phenomenal feature article on “Cold Shock” – the ugly, much quicker-killing relative of hypothermia. Part of what is explained by the uber-qualified author is that, whereas hypothermia kills after 30 minutes, cold shock kills in 3-5 minutes. Rather than try to summarize any more of the article, let me just copy the author’s bio here:
Chris Brooks is a physician, scientist and inventor. He is the director of research and development at Survival Systems Ltd. Darmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, and is an adjunct professor in the faculty of health and human performance at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Chris wrote the report “Survival in Cold Water – Staying Alive” in 2003 for the Marine Safety Directorate of Transport Canada.
Needless to say, I found the in-depth article absolutely profound.
Next, in the safety section, there is a first-hand account of a “World Class Athlete” who attempted to cross Lake Michigan width-wise from Michigan to Wisconsin. He lived… but Good God, you’ve got to read the story. Here’s a pertinent excerpt to ponder with all our recent discussion of VHFs and EPIRBS…
From the captain of the commercial vessel who rescued him: “We heard nothing on our radio – in fact, the guys took the EPIRB off your life jacket and even though the red light was flashing and beeper was beeping, it wasn’t transmitting.”
And… the “Strategy” feature in the issue is titled, of all things, “Strategies for Towing.”
Got an extra $5 laying around? Definitely a worthy investment.
Brandon
New Year's Day swim and paddle……
Larry Goolsby
12/30/07 #3952
Marine Park at 10 am on Tuesday. Dress for immersion if you are a swimmer. On Saturday after our trip to Govornor's point and back, I hopped in the water (tripped on my leash) and decided to swim around. I was wearing a drysuit with very little insulation underneath and a pfd. Within a couple of minutes (1 or 2) my legs cramped up. I was still able to backfloat and do a straight legged kick but swimming in a drysuit is not easy. Bring your boat and best winter garb. For those of you that use Pogies, I suggest bringing gloves. My hands went numb in just a few minutes without anything covering them.
Larry G.
Shrinkage Regatta
Reivers Dustin
01/01/08 #3957
What a blast. Four boats competed in the madness. I was dressed like a polar bear and could barely paddle. Before the race we all paddled out to the Post Point Bouy. I remember watching LB become this tiny dot out there thinking, “damn, that's a long far ways!” So we set our course turn mark about 100 yards from the beach. It was set up so the course was near shore so anyone could swim over and haul out on the rocks. We had Erik and Brian along with their OC-1's and it was flat-calm conditions. With those two watching everyone's back it really took the pressure off. Everyone started communicating with their partners, even before the “race”. We all dialed in to what was working and what didn't. If you check the photo's you can see that people on back were trying to eliminate draging in the water. The paddlers figured out that they needed to arm-paddle and forget the vertical paddle technique.
Balance was a whole new thing. When I was on back it helped to raise the high-side foot or leg to bring the boat upright. When I followed my instincts and lowered the low side leg it didn't help much and really slowed the boat. When I tried to get totally clear of the water the boat got really unstable. There are some non-intuitive things about being a passenger on a single-seat surfski. Actually there are many things I'm trying to evaluate about the experience. Maybe the biggest surprise is how fast we could go. All four teams were right up front moving well. LG is talking about actually doing a one-mile course out to the Post Point Bouy. It's do-able. Afterwards most of us fooled around in the water trying out swimming, other ways of being towed, towing two people, swimming your boat in, …
One more thing: I was dressed too heavy for an enjoyable paddle. Based on this experience I don't need as much under my drysuit to give myself some safety margin. But this is one single data point in an experiment that needs lots more data. Like LB said we need to do this in more severe conditions.
I'm curious how that would have been in a wetsuit.
RD
Re: shrinkage regatta
kathleen petereit
01/01/08 #3958
It's interesting that you could move the ski's at a good pace. When I had the young man that we rescued he felt like a dead weight and we inched forward it seemed. I had to use every ounce of my strength to get 40 yrds. However I had to keep my feet out for balance and he had no strength. I think he just flopped on the back and didn't have the energy to lift his legs which caused a lot of drag.
Good on you guys for practising ! Maybe an official rescue race this summer in Vancouver should be put into the schedule….Bob and Jeff….what do you think ???? Might be incentive to have more people practise.
Kathleen
Re: shrinkage regatta
Larry Goolsby
01/01/08 #3959
I was the most surprised at how fast we could paddle with a body on the back of the ski. Before we started, I figured that the buoy being 100 yards away was too far and that this was going to be an exercise in futility. We did a LeMonds style start from the beach and it only took us a few minutes to get to the buoy. At the buoy, the rule was that you had to dismount (both passengers and paddlers) and then remount before continuing to the finish. This was actually a fun race because in order to gain speed, the passenger had to raise their limbs out of the water to reduce drag. This severly raised the center of gravity and the boat became unstable. Eric G. paddled his OC-1 next to Shaun and I and clocked us at about 4 mph. The 100 yards (200 round trip) seemed way to short after we finished and we will have to extend the distance the next time we do this. Today the water was really calm and made this an easy exercise. We need to try this out in some chop and see how we do. I plan on making this an annual New Year's event with longer distances.
For those of you that didn't partake, you missed out on fun event that was really educational and entertaining. I was the passenger behind Shaun and my hands and feet were not cold at the end of the 200 yard dash. Shaun and I switched places and did the 200 yards a second time. This event raised my level of confidence but ruined my self esteem after Caroline/Leann beat us to the finish. We'll kick their asses next year….
Larry G.
Re: shrinkage regatta
Shane Baker
01/01/08 #3960
Happy New Year everyone. While you B'ham paddlers were playing “Tow the Dummy,” seven of us raced 12 miles around Fox Island. Don K kicked arse. I'll see if I can get results posted on Noteboard on the SR website. I, being the wise old man and race director, picked the direction that we raced. I made the wrong choice. The tide was supposed to be full at the bridge at 11:30am, that is, incoming, but it was apparent that it was going out at 10:10, the time we got going. So much for predictions. I usehttp://www.saltwatertides.com/dynamic.dir/washingtonsites.html for info. The wind was a headwind all the way around. I have never figured out why it is that rounding an island that the apparent wind always blows in your face. I have paddled around Fox Island perhaps 100+ times over the years and today I totally screwed up the choice of direction. My bad.
Little bit about towing. Thirty years ago we used to practice towing each other in sea kayaks in case one of us had an injury that prevent us from reaching our destination. Towing another boat with an occupant is hard work even with a river kayakers sling and throw rope tied around one's waist. Today, towing a surfski is out of the question as none of them have an attachment point on the area of the bow for a tow rope. Some of the early ones used to have a substantial bow loop which was great for towing. In some of the early races across Puget Sound, before Sound Rowers became a club, the race directors would recruit tow boats to drag us to the start. The Eagle Harbor Yacht club liked to help and I've been part of a chain of 25 kayaks, rowboats and surfskis being towed across the Sound. Seems to me that if you are in conditions where you may loose your ski and require a tow then you probably should have had a tether and not be in that situation in the first place.
The more serious stuff. About 10 years ago, maybe more, at the Gap to Gap Relay race in Yakima, I was involved in a body recovery in the fishing pond in the Sportman State Park. I had just returned to the Park after running the river leg of the Relay on the day before the race when a young man ran over, stopped me, and asked if I could help find a ranger who had disappeared in the pond. Long story short, the 19 year old Ranger had walked into the fishing pond to try to rescue a duck that had eaten the bait on a kids fishing line. The Ranger had drowned. The dive team who lost 4 of their members earlier in the year in an irrigation canal showed up and found the Ranger on the bottom of the pond. They laid him across the back deck of my Valhalla Victory surfski and I paddled him 200 yards to shore. He was totally limp and it was probably the toughest 200 yards I have ever paddled. It was like towing a 5 gallon bucket tied to a rope. Balance wasn't a problem, nor was the water and air temperature. Had that been out in the middle of Bellingham Bay at this time of year, there may have been two victims.
I'm not sure the rear deck of my 23lb Huki will stand the weight of a 200lb person laying across it and you are not going to last long in the water. It seems very basic to me that you not get in a position where you lose a boat and need a tow. I had better not paddle with anyone who is likely to lose their ski I guess.
Shane.