Niels, I quite recently had an experience very close to yours. The paddler in question had wanted to join a "no-fault / no-leader" crossing, which even under completely benign circumstances would have overtaxed her/his level of physical fitness. As it turned out luckily, given the prevailing sea state on the day, her/his (lack of) skill was the first limiting factor, which was just as well, since it kept us close to shore long enough to ascertain that s/he would be better off gaining experience under less challenging circumstances (i.e., before having to tow an exhausted paddler for miles). Fortunately, this particular paddler was quickly willing to accept reality and very happy to spend a little time working on some basics in a sheltered inlet before returning to the launch site with me. (The two other paddlers were thus free to go on.) The greatest eye-opener for the paddler: S/he had apparently rolled a white water boat in a pool successfully; in her/his sea kayak s/he failed to right her/himself in a sort of bow rescue after lowering her/himself into only a partial inversion while already holding on to my bow. S/he ended up performing a "semi-inverted exit". We emptied the boat, righted it and then spent some time on re-entry practice -- again the paddler in question had greatly underestimated the need for practice. Last point: The paddler in question provided a lively listing of all the gear s/he still "needed" to buy, like flares and smoke and a signalling mirror and a radio ... all good to have, of course, but I felt the "need" to state quite stongly that all those purchases should perhaps be seen as a lower priority than learning boat skills in circumstances where there was no chance at all of "needing" any of them! This point, too, s/he accepted. I will spare you all a long discourse with parallel examples of my (in-)famous (;-) scuba diving career, but I strongly feel that there are three important points in these stories: 1 - We must not overestimate our skills or level of fitness -- neither can be bought in a box, but require dedication to acquire. 2 - We must not overestimate our ability to rely on gear to get us out of trouble without a healthy dose of point -1- -- even if they can be bought in a box, their deployment will still require practice. 3 - We must accept responsibility for our own actions and not casually rely on others to bail us out -- in the example above the paddler in question was not even aware that s/he was! Best regards, Ralph (Hoehn) Ralph C. Hoehn Ralph_at_PouchBoats.com www.PouchBoats.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 May 21 2001 - 09:10:37 PDT
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