[Paddlewise] Collision, almost

 Last night after work I went to Huntington Harbor to paddle away the
frustrations of a very *bad* day at work.  Huntington is not one of my
favorite local harbors but since it has very little traffic it can be
serene.  It was dusk so I taped  red and green light sticks to my paddle
and checked to see if air horn and waterproof flashlight were in handy
reach.  I had been slowly passing by an impeccably maintained lapstrake
sailboat in a slip, admiring it,  when I heard a noise behind me,
swiveled back, and saw  two guys in a rowing shell coming straight at me
like a bat out of hell. Collision time, about 4 seconds.  I dug in, did
a power sweep turn to starboard, probably yelling "hey, go to port, to
port!"  I don't remember.
We did miss each other, though there was some clattering of paddle and
oars on both hulls.  It was that close.  As they receded down channel
one of them broke a stroke and flipped me the bird.

Angry?  Yes, I was, no more or less than at someone who drives SoCal
freeways doing 100 when the rest of us are doing 60 (OK, 75 <g>).  They
weren't looking but then neither was I.  I had let the serenity and
quietness of the harbor lull me into a false sense of security and not
doing a 360 degree scan every minute or so as I usually do.  I don't
know what these rowing shells can do in the way of speed with two pumped
up guys going hell for kingdom come (10-19 knts?), but the result of a
collision would have been catastrophic, mostly for me, I'd guess, since
I was just ambling along.

Moral of the story:  Most of the traffic that is lethal to kayakers is
bigger and faster than we are, but makes some noise so we can take
measures to detect and avoid it in time, but in this case it was blind.
So was I. My "running lights", flashlight, and air horn were not even a
factor in collision avoidance here. Keep that 360 degree look-around
wherever you are.

-Nick



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