Ken Schroeter, Laconia, NH wrote: >BTW, just finished Gronseth and Broze's "Deep Trouble". I think I will > pretty much not kayak in the Puget Sound area during the winter... It seems > to, well, suck. It seems like there are a lot of dangerous experiences > there. Is this something more widespread, or is it related to the high > numbers of kayakers up there? Yes, the NW is dangerous beyond belief. Nobody should paddle here at all, especially in Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands. There, that should cut down some on the competition for campsites (that have existed for decades but lately have been advertised nationally as a "watertrail"). Dare I mention it rains all summer here too. Actually, most of the stories I wrote for Sea Kayaker (that were collected in "Deep Trouble") were written from 1984 through 1987. Back then there wasn't a lot of kayaking done in most of the rest of the country but it was already becoming quite popular in WA and BC. The fact that George and I both live in Seattle and Sea Kayaker's editors were in Vancouver, BC would mean we were more likely to hear about and be able to more easily research local accidents. This has probably had something to do with this "Puget Sound/San Juan/Bermuda Triangle" syndrome as well. The strong reversing currents and the 45 to 55 degree F. water in the San Juan Islands also often played a part especially when the wind is moving the opposite way from the water. Fall and winter windstorms and "arctic outbreaks" (winds caused by cold air pouring over mountain passes) seemed to be a recurring theme in the articles as well. Also many of the early paddlers in other parts of the country paddled solo (often for lack of knowing anyone else who kayaked) and so when they had an accident there was not only no one to help them survive and there was less likely to be any witnesses to report what happened. I agreed to write the safety column for Sea Kayaker partly as the result of horrendously bad reporting on an sea kayaking accident on Lake Winnapasaukee, (probably your regular paddling area) in New Hampshire, that was written by a kayak dealer with an axe to grind. In that solo accident report the author's wild (and even impossible) speculations were often treated as facts by the readers of many club publications around the country and in Canada that printed it. Among other things the author speculated that the accident happened in an area downwind from where the kayak was found. While this is virtually impossible it allowed the author to further speculate that the paddler was in an area that may have had surf conditions in what had been one of the strongest storms in decades and that he might have been forcibly ejected from his larger sized cockpit (larger, that is, than the cockpits in the kayaks the author promoted) while doing and ender in this (maybe) surf (the author didn't really even know if surf conditions capable of endering a kayak existed in the impossible area of speculation or not). While the author mentioned the larger cockpit in the victims kayak as the probable cause four or five times in his fantasy based speculations he never mentioned the facts he knew about such as the 1/2 bottle of Tequila found with the kayak or the .12 blood alcohol level of the victims body. With that as my example, I was most careful not to speculate on what happened in any fatal accident without pretty strong evidence to back up my theories. Evidence is often very hard to come by in solo fatal accidents. So the accident reports in "Deep Trouble" are probably quite skewed in favor of close calls rather than fatalities. So much more can be learned from first hand reports. Also, survivors and their friends and families are a lot easier to talk to and much easier to write about. I hated writing about fatalities. This was one of the reasons I quit writing a regular column in Sea Kayaker after the last two columns I did both concerned fatalities. Matt Broze http://www.marinerkayaks.com *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Feb 28 2001 - 01:54:34 PST
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