Dear PaddleWise readers, A news story hit some newspapers and radios in British Columbia on April 7th, 1999. It stated that three sea kayakers were rescued in heavy seas by a fishing boat and then transferred to a Coast Guard boat for safe return to Port Hardy (accident on 99/04/06 - near northern Vancouver Island). The news story incorrectly reported that one of the kayakers capsized in high winds. The local paper in Victoria, at least, phoned me to get the correct story. Three of us were on a off-season, heavy weather trip from Bella-Bella to Port Hardy to enjoy the coast prior to the crowded, post-winter melt season. We were experiencing even heavier gales and rougher seas the whole way down than expected, with incredibly inaccurate forecasting info from Environment Canada. Hail, snow, and SE gales at 180 degrees to forecasted directions wore us down heavily, and many days we huddled near emergency style fires. After hitting open water for a few days of intense, fast moving cold fronts, we had a small weather window, and tried to cross from Cape Caution, across the dangerous Queen Charlotte Strait, to the remote Storm Islands. 20 knot winds rose to 30, with higher gusts. Our photographer had his rudder break. I had to tow him for 5 hours in heavy seas, pulling 450 lbs or so - with gear, paddler, boat. He was going hypothermic, and in distress. The other paddler (a top BCU level 5 paddler) had his Arluk II kayak start to break up in the near pitch-polling seas, and was taking on water. We battled for 7 heart-breaking hours to do the normal 2 hour crossing to the mid point island group. An unknown at the time "net ebb" was sucking us out to open water. Various May-Days and numerous distress flares, combined with full helicopter, plane, zodiac, Coast Guard cutter, and fishing boat combined cooperation finally located us in the heavy seas. The distressed member of our team received mist steam emergency treatment for core temp restoration. We transferred to a larger Coast Guard vessel off the fish boat once in the lee of the Storm Islands. Only my epoxy-modified Norkapp survived intact. We were able to procure pictures, so have the material for a good accident report, so for any copyright issues would rather end this posting about now. (We basically pushed our eldest team member way beyond all reasonable thresholds, and for this I will never forgive myself, but we did all survive and are still talking to each other). This posting is to merely correct any media miss-information. Please, be careful out there, it can go so wrong, so fast, and in any season. BC'in Ya Doug Lloyd Victoria, BC *************************************************************************** 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 Mon Apr 12 1999 - 03:22:54 PDT
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