Paddlewisers, I just had to go surf kayaking this Christmas Eve morning here in sunny Southern California. An air temp of 76 and a water temp of 58 was too irresistible. After applying some sunblock and putting on a short sleeve/short leg wetsuit, which I was quite warm in, I had a nice day of surfing. Unfortunately, not everything was perfect, because the face of the waves were reaching only four feet. For waves that small, I brought my plastic VCP Skerray RM sea kayak to play in and left the whitewater boat on the beach. Anyhow, I met a nice couple from Colorado in the surf. They were whitewater paddlers and were vacationing in the area. The girl in the couple ended up swimming after wiping out on one wave, so it was rescue time, which I get to do almost everytime I go surfing. In this case a rescue was optional, because the waves were small enough that there was no danger for the swimmer. But a swim or towing a swimmer over a hundred yards to the beach would've been a lot more work than a quick X-rescue. In the surf zone I quickly paddled over to the swamped whitewater boat, pulled it over my front deck to drain the water, got the boat back in the water, and held it while the girl climbed back in. Just when she was starting to get her sprayskirt on, we had one of those waves with a four foot face about to break on us. Usually there was more time between sets, but we were just unlucky this time. Needless to say, the girl wasn't going to have time to get the sprayskirt on, and all we could do was disperse. The guy and I were able to punch the wave, and the girl, without a sprayskirt on, was carried away by the wave and ended up surfing backwards about a hundred yards and then capsized about 25 yards from the beach, from which she was towed on in by her boyfriend. By the way, after four hours of surfing, a few combat rolls, a couple dozen practice rolls, and some sculling practice, the oval VCP hatch on my kayak leaked about 2 cups of water. The round hatch didn't leak at all. Duane Strosaker <A HREF="http://members.aol.com/pirateseakayaker/index.html">Pirate Sea Kayaker</A> Sea Kayaking in Southern California With an Attitude for Adventure *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************
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