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From: Michael Pitzrick <pitzrick_at_magma.ca> subject: [Paddlewise] entrapment Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 17:32:26 -0500 · This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:36 PDT

I can think of at least one case of purely equipment-related entrapment that
might have killed one of my most competent sea kayaking buddies, had I not
been there to perform a "hand of god" rescue.

After a tranquil tour of an hour or so up Cayuga Lake in central New York
State using our newly finished Greenland-style paddles, we decided to take a
break at our turn around point to practice rolls and braces. Not feeling
confident rolling with her new paddle (she usual paddles with a Werner) and
a different boat (she was paddling my Anas Acuta rather than her Eddyline
Falcon), she asked me to spot her. After what looked like a very good
layback roll, she didn't quite reach the balance point on her back deck and
recapsized. She executed a number of layback and C-to-C rolls using
excellent form, but seemed to never quite be able to complete the end of the
motion. The roll attempts started looking pretty frantic. Well, sometimes
that's what things look like when someone's trying to get a gulp of air for
the next roll attempt or two. Eventually she just disappeared under the boat
as if regrouping, but I was beginning to worry. We have hard fast rule that
there will be no bow rescue until it is asked for using a tap with a palm on
the bottom of the kayak. Just as I was about to break that rule and come
zooming in, a hand came out of the water and tapped the hull.

Laurie competently grabbed my bow, but was unable to come up. What the heck
was going on? I told her to let go, and came in for HOG. She came up lying
on her back deck, fully conscious, but flustered and frightened looking. "My
pfd's caught on something!", she said. Pretty quickly I found that her new
pfd had two nylon strap loops on the lower back, and that the handle of my
back deck bilge pump (a Chimp pump) had passed through one of them. The end
of the handle had passed through the loop, and the loop was under a lot of
tension. We struggled for quite a while with it, but eventually by trying
this and that, plus brute force, I got her loose.

Laurie said that the entrapment had happened on her first roll attempt, and
had prevented her from getting over her boat at the end of her roll. She
couldn't get into a position for a balance brace. She couldn't lean forward
far enough to release her spray skirt, and at any rate couldn't come out of
the cockpit because she was tied to the boat. She insisted that I cut open
both loops before she let go of my boat, and there was no further incident.

She called the designer of the pfd to suggest that having those loops on a
back might be a bad idea, and he said that if she didn't like them, she
should cut them off.
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