> One of my friends, Duncan Taylor, while in view of his wife on shore, was > swept out to sea while kayaking at a beach in Maurtius. Despite an > intensive air-sea search, no trace of him was ever found. I could not find this placename. I did find a place "Mauritius", an island off the East coast of Madagascar. I guess the question there becomes, did he have a GPS and compass? I think most of us ocean paddlers always have the fallback position of being able to select the general direction of the coast line, paddling perpendicular to the current for some distance, and then heading for shore. A person swept out to sea off an isolated island has a much more difficult problem, in that their default safe return course can't be assumed like "if I head west or north, I can't help but hit land." A lesson here I suppose is that if you aren't surrounded by land like on a lake, be sure to have an adequate water supply and navigational gear that will allow a return from 20 miles out in any random direction. Even if you are just surfing, how hard can it be to slip a pre-packed drybox and a couple 2 liter bottles of water in your rear hold. Richard Walker Houston, TX http://www.neosoft.com/~rww/kayak_log.html *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Jan 26 1999 - 08:59:03 PST
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