Re: [Paddlewise] Ripped Out of the Cockpit?

On Tue, Jan 11, 2000 at 11:09:37PM -0500, Strosaker_at_aol.com wrote:
> I occasionally read stories about kayakers being ripped, sucked, yanked or 
> whatever out of the cockpit when they are thrashed by some big wave in the 
> surf.  I've been slammed, cartwheeled and thoroughly thrashed by some decent 
> waves, and this has never happened to me.  Are these stories just a sorry 
> excuse for losing one's cool and blowing the hatch too soon?

During a wildwater race about a year and a half ago, I was forcibly
removed from my (whitewater slalom) kayak by a rather large hole on
the Deschutes River.  The violence of the event was enough to
thoroughly wrench one of my knees, probably because I was trying very
hard to stay in the boat and had jammed both of them against
the deck.  Believe me, the very last thing I wanted to do was
swim the rest of that rapid, but the river didn't give me any
other option.

Based on that experience (and some others, including some where I managed
to stay in despite being thrashed a bit) I'd say that holes are more
likely to extract paddlers from their boats than waves.   Impacts
(which can jar the paddler so that their brace points are no longer
in contact with the boat) tend to hasten that process...as do imploding
sprayskirts, something that I try to avoid as much as possible. ;-)


---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
rsk_at_gsp.org

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