March Madness and I am not talking about NCAA tourney basketball (for non-North Americans, this is the time of college basketball finals which is often termed March Madness). I am referring to the tendency of Northeast paddlers to be caught out on yet very cold waters ill equipped to deal with it. Our local NYCkayaker listserve contains a newspaper account of a fellow who lucked out in a bad situation while paddling last Sunday ill prepared for conditions. He was paddling just slightly north of the NYC limits on Long Island Sound from the Westchester side to the Long Island Side and Nassau County, a distance of about 3 or 4 miles in this part of the Sound. He did some vital things wrong: --Had no cold water clothing despite water still probably in the high 30s, certainly not more than 40F. --Ignored wind conditions that would make his return to Westchester nare impossible --Carried no spare anything. --No VHF radio He lucked out in the following ways: --He managed to land on the rocks of a lighthouse, Execution Rocks Lighthouse. If he had gotten caught further out and capsized, the cold water would have done him in. --He had 3 flares with him. He shot them off and each one actually worked with the last one finally drawing the attention of a passing tug and barge (these are active commercial waters that form the backdoor entrance leading down to NY Harbor). Just a couple of observations from me: 1. He indeed was lucky with the flares. I tend to consider flares as just window dressing to satisfy US Coast Guard regs since these safety devices are highly unreliable in terms of actually shooting off properly plus their burn and hang time is so slight that it would depend on someone actually looking your way for the few seconds effectiveness of your flares in order to know something is amiss. More and more, I see handheld VHF radios as performing the vital distress safety function, although you should still carry flares, signal mirror, smoke flares, etc. 2. He apparently has paddled this area numerous times. Familiarity breeds contempt or certainly a relaxed awareness and over-confidence. I have paddled that area often in the last 10 years and frequently enough the winds are quite adverse for a return passage; the weather radio and even TV was talking about the high wind velocities and the directio. I was once paddling with a group and one woman simply did not have the strength to paddle against it. I sent the rest of the people on to other spots on our intended tour while I stayed with her behind a few large rocks in the water where I fed her lunch and water to revitalize her. Luckily the winds let up a bit and, with the long feeding and hydration break we had, we were able to continue on back. ralph diaz ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph Diaz . . . Folding Kayaker newsletter PO Box 0754, New York, NY 10024 Tel: 212-724-5069; E-mail: rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com "Where's your sea kayak?"----"It's in the bag." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************
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