After a winter away from Paddlewise, I saw and heard some news stories that made me feel compelled to rejoin. Most of the recent news stories were not good - May 28 - Robert Beauvais, 51, student at Buzzard's Bay Kayak School in Westport (MA) practicing "turning techniques" drowned during a class in Fairhaven Bay. He was apparently with an instructor and other students, had a PFD, but drowned after capsizing. May 1 - Brothers boating in Scituate (MA) may have been drinking, capsized, and in strong currents a kayaker attempted a rescue of one but the victim slipped out of the paddlers' hands. The synopsis did not include information on the second brother's fate. Scituate is on more-or-less open ocean coast. June 16 - Hull (MA) A canoe carrying a man and a woman overturned. The woman's body, swamped canoe and a cooler washed ashore. The man's body was not found. Hull is in the protected little islands south of Boston. The weather was very fine on the 16th, with hardly a breath of wind. June 9 (?) - Somewhere between Newburyport and Lawrence (MA) - Fisherman in canoe, lines became entangled, overturned the boat, and while disentangling himself reportedly removed his PFD and drowned. Late April - An open canoe attempting to run rapids on the Contocook River, was warned that the section was not suitable for an open boat but ran it anyway and overturned and was drowned. Add to that 3 more weekend drownings here in NH which had nothing to do with paddling (and everything to do with small children left unattended near water) and two canoe and kayak deaths on NH rivers during the spring runoff, and one gets a picture that paddling here is not always as safe as it should be. There may have been some discussion of this already on Paddlewise - I hope this isn't too redundant. -Jerry. *************************************************************************** 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 Jun 18 2001 - 08:31:43 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:43 PDT