This is for all the people who exercise their personal freedom, and liberty of choice, and choose not to wear a PFD. I support and believe in your principals, but if we were paddling together and you get into trouble (are drowning) I don't have a choice. My value system is so ingrained that I will come to your aid. I'll take on that responsibility as I suspect the majority of people who wear their PFD's all the time will. Take comfort in this. The rest of us will just shoulder the burden. One week after the drowning here in Victoria I joined the annual paddle out to Discovery Island to clean up the shore line. Every year local paddlers do this here and I encourage paddlers to do the same in their local waters. It's good for the environment and good PR. Believe it or not three of the paddlers choose not to wear any immersion gear. The water temperature taken with my cheap thermometer was 46*F. Air temp in the low 50*s. Before we left one person took on the responsibility to point out that there was no leader on this trip. He went on to explain the tides, currents and predicted winds. Everyone acknowledged and indicated they were all right in this. Two of the paddlers with out immersion gear indicated they were not that experienced and would be nervous in the predicted afternoon chop and said they'd likely turn around after reaching Discovery Island. So off we set. Upon reaching Discovery I glided over to the novices and gently suggested, since neither had immersion gear, it might be better to stay with the group. If one got in trouble I was not confident the other would be much help. They'd gone through the excellent intro course offered by Ocean River Sports but admitted they had not practiced a self rescue in a long time. I think they meant never. So they stayed with us. True to form the wind came up. On the return we split into two groups of six. I started out with the second group but by surfing the wind waves easily caught up with the first which was getting a bit spread out. I purposely choose to stay near the weaker paddlers. I'd rather have headed out to the rough water to play. I gave them some advice, paddle faster in the rough water, try to breath, simple stuff and generally tried to get them to relax. By the end of the day I was towing one in for the last mile or so. When we were parting company back on shore one of them came over to thank me which was nice. In parting I suggested they should get wet or dry suits. "Oh we have suits. We just didn't want to wear them," was the response. I spent my time shepherding, these people simply because they didn't want to be discomfited. I just shook my head and walked away. The third guy had his wet suit under his front hatch. Was I wrong in playing the role I took on? My value system says no. I had good day. I could have had a great day but if something had of gone wrong I would have had to live with my selfishness and I was not prepared to do that. Gordin Warner Victoria *************************************************************************** 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 Tue Apr 23 2002 - 16:03:49 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:52 PDT