KiAyker_at_aol.com wrote: > How many people have actually been saved by wearing pfd's? I don't want > any anecdotal stories here, but actual documented accounts of people who are > alive today because they were wearing their pfd. There is NO WAY one can > determine unequivocally that the pfd saved their lives, or that a paddler > might be alive today had they been wearing one! ME!!! I always have worn my PFD period. One day about nine years ago on relatively calm waters my PFD saved my life, again period. Below is the documentation. You will just have to trust my assessment and analysis of the situation that the PFD unquivocally saved my life. I was paddling on the upper East River in NYC with some other paddlers including a visitor from the West Coast. One of them is a friend who never wore a PFD and swore he could get his out from under deck bungee and on in a jiffy if he ever were to go over (and hang on to his paddle and boat at the same time...) We decided to cross on something called the Bronx Kill to get over to the Harlem River and back down the East River to our put-in in Brooklyn. The Bronx Kill is a small estuary that separates Randall's Island from the Bronx. It is navigable by kayak only at certain times of the tidal cycles. The reason is that the there are several low bridges including one that carries utilities to the island and the water has to be at a certain level to give you enough daylight to go under. I was first in the group and paddled up to the low bridge and could see that the water was running through and under it too high for clearance and I paddled back a hundred feet or so to tell the others. They started portaging on the two banks. I was deciding which one I wanted to go to and in looking at them I failed to realize that the current was moving me swiftly back toward the low bridge. The next thing I knew I was pinned against it quite strongly. I was in my Klepper single. I went to push off and inadvertently dipped the upstream side of my kayak into the fast moving water. The next thing I knew I was hanging upside down. I wet exited (I understand from later discussions with knowledgeable paddlers that even if it were a more rollable boat and I could roll it, it is nearly impossible to roll when so pinned as the boat gets stuck during the roll and won't come up fully). I knew enough to come up on the upstream side and my PFD gave me enough bouyancy to do so. I clung to the upside down kayak and here is where the PFD saved my life. The water was now rushing under the bridge. It was sucking my body under with quite a lot of force, my legs were being pushed well under the boat. Without the buoyancy of the PFD I simply could not have been riding high enough in the water to hang on for dear life to the boat and surely would have been sucked under the bridge. The bridge had all sorts of tie rods sticking out, old wire trash cans thrown in by vandals and who knows what else to ensnarl me underwater. There would have been no way to put on the PFD or have the time to if I had not had it on. It was nearly impossible to swim away since before one could get even one or two strokes and some momentum against the current you would have been pulled under the boat and bridge. I managed to slowly with some foot kicks to swim the boat toward shore rubbing it all the way along the rough concrete surface (thank god for good strong abrasion resistant hypalon). It was only about 60 feet or so. Again, I want to repeat that this was a calm day, calm water, September air and water temperatures which are both quite pleasant here. My point is that there is no such thing as completely safe conditions on the water. Your situation and conditions can change in the blink of an eye. ralph diaz -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph Diaz . . . Folding Kayaker newsletter PO Box 0754, New York, NY 10024 Tel: 212-724-5069; E-mail: rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com "Where's your sea kayak?"----"It's in the bag." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Fri Aug 06 1999 - 05:12:43 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:11 PDT