Hello Paul, I've been there, but as a trip leader; I canceled the trip. It was just an overnight trip with my regular paddling buddy and a rank novice. The new guy really dawdled at the put-in (costing us an hour) and we had about 4 hours of daylight to do a 1.5-2 hour crossing. With 3 hours left, winds picking up a little, and a chance of rain, I called it off. My paddling buddy and I would have done just fine, but it was too much to think of taking the new guy across. He could actually have endangered us if he'd have slowed us down so much we got stuck in worsening weather. It's not just Mr. X's safety--it's your own. Without lots of prior communication, people you've never paddled with before are risky prospects for overnight trips. It's strange, but I could probably trust a lot of people here on Paddlewise to be sight-unseen paddling partners, but I've built a general impression of a lot of folks' general paddling attitude from their trip reports, comments, and questions. I'd be more comfortable paddling with some of you on a first outing than I would even somebody I know locally, but whom I've never paddled with. Communication--it's definitely important. >So, my question is, what would you do? How do you deal >with situations like this without coming off as an >insufferable bore, an alarmist, or a pain in the butt? Anyway, to get back to your direct question: it sounded pretty obvious that this guy was "out of the ordinary", so calling attention to the group's predicament would be out of range of being a simple insufferable bore. It sounds pretty obvious to me. As for being an alarmist or PITA, that's more dependent on your relationship with your other two paddling partners. I won't hesitate to draw attention to a risky prospect. When paddling with 'untried' partners, I bring spare gear. I would have told him point-blank that the deck load was taboo. I could have loaned him a drytop and neoprene shorts (something is better than nothing). Then again, I'm 6'-6", so I buy XL even though I'm skinny, so my gear will fit almost everybody. As for no prior rescue abilities, I'd take that under consideration with an eye to the weather/water conditions. If it looked mild, I feel confident I could get the individual back in his boat in a pinch. If things looked dicey, and rescues seemed imminent every 15 minutes, I would call off the trip. One can't expect a novice to have all the gear, skills, and knowledge right off the bat, but there are things that you can have them avoid doing that can make the harder-to-avoid risks more bearable. Nobody likes to be a quitter, but sometimes canceling the trip is the safest thing to do. Sad to say, after you've done it once, it gets easier! Considering the effort and expense involved in merely getting to Orcas in the first place, these things could have been abated earlier with more communication before the trip. Shawn Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices http://auctions.yahoo.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 Mon Apr 30 2001 - 08:43:52 PDT
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