RE: [Paddlewise] The Gotta Get Home Syndrome; Was: how dangerous [] kayaking?

>From: Kirby Stevens <stevens_at_islandnet.com>

>I think my favorite reply was from a guide in Telegraph Cove.   SNIP ABOUT 
>WEATHER  With nothing else to do we wandered over to talk to them and ask 
>if they were really serious about going out.     They replied(and they were 
>from two separate tour companies), "Keep quiet we don't want to scare the 
>guests."    We were both totally appalled at their response and just left 
>it at that and walked away.  Interesting isn't it?   That episode made me 
>think what contingency plans tour groups have when it comes to weather.    
>Do they just go because that is what the clients have paid for or do they 
>refund their money?
>
>Do you have an answer?
>
>Kirby

A few years back I was in that same neck of the woods (or waters) with a 
couple of experienced paddling buddies. We launched at Port Hardy in a 
near-gale which was blowing up to a full gale. However, we were all good 
paddlers, in good shape and with recent rough water experience. Plus, our 
course lay mostly running before the wind and waves. We had a ball, and 
landed at Songees Creek several hours later in great humour.
We were somewhat bemused to find a large tour group setting up camp there. 
Their guides had brought them across Goletas Channel - a place notorious for 
funnelling wind and water against one another - in low visiblity (there's a 
fair bit of fishing boat, tugs with barges, and cruise ship traffic in the 
Channel), and beam on to the seas. This had kept them "on schedule" to be 
back in Port Hardy the next day. The clients, though reasonably fit and 
active in a general sort of way, had no particular paddling experince that 
we could tell. They had found the crossing a big adventure, and didn't 
mention being scared. We said nothing (the guides were feeding us left-over 
coffee cake, freshly baked in their Coleman stove-top oven), but we 
exchanged meaningful glances.
So one explanation might be that my buddies and I were not as hardcore as we 
thought, and the conditions were in fact well within the safety envelope of 
even beginer paddlers.
Another possibility would be that the tour group had been damn lucky.
At the risk of generalizing about groups, the sort of clients who can afford 
guided tours (which ain't cheap) often come from the movers and shakers of 
society, and are accustomed to being able to overcome many obstacles by 
issuing orders. I wonder if the bucks the clients are forking over, combined 
with the used-to-getting-their-way sorta folks that many of the clients may 
be, puts undue pressure on the guides to put to sea in dubious conditions. 
Reminds me of the situation I understand applies in passenger aviation; in 
theory, the pilot has absolute authority to make the go/no-go call, but he's 
got a plane load of fare-paying passengers, and an employer with schedules 
to keep...
Not that the passengers(read clients) are always rational about this sorta 
stuff either: during a multi-day winter storm we had in Canada a couple of 
years ago, many stranded airline passengers were threatening to sue the 
airlines for not taking off - and for not putting their lives at risk, 
perhaps?

Philip Torrens
N49°16' W123°06'


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