Dave Kruger wrote: > > Richard Culpeper wrote: > > [megasnip of an excellent analysis] > > > Thus, for example, a rescue coordinator should assign someone capable of > > performing an assisted rescue to do the actual rescue, and assign a more > > experienced paddler to round up the group and assist other paddlers in > > avoiding broaches and further dumps, [snip] If, however, you break everyone's > > skills down into categories such as situational awareness, technique, and > > leadership, and then try to find the best balance overall, you start noticing > > that **situational awareness and leadership skills are usually more scarce > > than technical skills,** [emphasis added] so if a rescue must include all > > three aspects, then you had better not sacrifice one entirely (e.g. > > situational awareness) simply because that person also has the best technical > > skills of several people who have requisite technical skills. This is pretty much standard operational procedure for a good tour service. Our best local one does just that. If some one goes over, just one or two of the guides go in to make the rescue while the other guides move the rest of the group on or keeps them out of the way. A lot of milling around doesn't help an rescue much. BUT that is a professional/commercial outfit. Club trips are a game of pickup basketball with relative skills not fully known. You generally don't have the luxury in some/many clubs to have a cadre of experienced paddlers to assign various responsibilities. I suppose there are some clubs that do but I haven't seen that beyond saying someone is the sweep and someone should paddle next to a paddler that may not be as skilled as the rest of the group. > > Wanted to isolate Richard's "situational awareness" point for emphasis. I've > seen this problem several times when something nasty went down in a lab (I'm a > synthetic chemist): after an accident, someone will immediately jump in and > start "doing" something, often out of sheer adrenaline, while the cooler heads > take a 5-second pause to size up the scene and **then** select an ordered > sequence to solve the problem. > > Situational awareness is almost completely unteachable, I think, though one can > raise the awareness in others who naturally are bent that way. I don't know the term "situational awareness" but it sounds something like common sense and sizing up what counts and what doesn't count. If that is what is meant then I have been lucky to have seen such display of "situational awareness" early in my paddling days and this opened my own eyes to how to decipher a situation. I had been paddling for only a handful or so of months when my wife and I decided to tackle the Manhattan Circumnavigation (about 32 miles). During the trip, a canoe flipped while on the East River. It was a big crowd of paddlers (perhaps 25 or so) and people started chasing down loose gear etc. But one astute paddler immediately sized up the most critical aspect of the situation. The canoeists, because it was a hot day, had their PFD zippers completely undone; given the speeds of the current (about 4 to 5 knots at that spot) and other water dynamics, they could have easily slipped out of their PFDs and gone under (it has been known to happen in these waters). He immediately called for them to zip up before even thinking of anything else. Then he "ordered" two people to go in for the rescue and empty of the canoe. The rest of us kept as back as we could. I came away from this episode realizing the importance of securing the victim's personal safety situation quickly before anything else. If someone is trying to develop situational awareness, that is a good first point to consider. Another, and this may be a semantical or nuance difference from Dave's point, I think that it is important to do something quickly and not to do too much pondering. Don't forget what I said yesterday or so about that other trip in which a leader decided to debate with himself and others the optimum way to do a needed rescue rather than just do the first one that presented itself given the relative positions of the boats around. I have had to do so few real rescues in the hundreds of group trips I have lead or been on that maybe I am not qualified to speak. But the few times I have, I took advantage of the cards presented to me. In one trip, which I was not leading (the "leader" was actually a half mile ahead of us churning away with hardly a look back), a kayak went over. I whipped around to get into position to do the rescue when serendipitously a double kayak paddled by beginners came alongside into perfect position. Rather than have them move out of the way for me to get into position, I just directed them to do the rescue in the simplest terms saving the fancy language and rescue lecture for lunch later. I was in a hurry because the water was cold and no one except me and my wife in our double had cold water gear on despite the high 70s degree air temperature. Lest I sound like a know-it-all, I actually had failed to notice something that did slow down the rescue a bit and required some extra effort...the person getting back into the boat was wearing paddling pants with neoprene ankle cuffs. His pants were full of water making it somewhat difficult for him to rise out into his boat. I had the rescuers tuck on the back of his pants waist to get him back in. But I should have noticed the cause when his first effort failed and asked him to release the velcro on the neoprene ankle cuffs. So one is always learning something. 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 - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Nov 30 1999 - 06:36:14 PST
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