John Fereira said: > Even if you don't put anything on the rear deck > it's not a bad idea to practice/test re-entries under > controlled conditions in a boat loaded as you intend to do so > for a multiday trip. John's statement should be GOSPEL for all paddlers. Last week, a bunch of us took a second guiding class from Wayne Horodowich. At the end of the day we learned a very important lesson. We had already spent most of the day swimming, paddling, towing boats and swimmers, rolling, and doing re-entries and most of us were exhausted and a little bit cold from fatigue and the water temps. At this time, the wind had kicked up and the swell and wind waves had also kicked up quite a bit. We then went to the outside of a breakwater to practice solo re-entries as close as possible to the breakwater. Now we had to contend with very confused water as we not only had the swell and waves breaking against the breakwater, but we also had the reflected waves coming off of it. In the interest of safety, we only had 1/2 the class in the water at a time, and each swimmer had a designated safety boat to tow him/her away from the rocks if needed. Although this class was composed of very skilled paddlers, as Wayne said--"This is when you guys will find yourself swimming.....at the end of a long tiring day, when the sea conditions have kicked up, and you weren't paying attention." It was very sobering to find that the rescue skills we practice frequently, were so much more difficult to do in these conditions. All of us had practiced these skills in similar sea conditions--but not when we were so tired. Needless to say, we will be repeating this exercise a lot. Doing rescues and re-entries in calm water is great for teaching a beginner, but don't think that just because you can do it on flat water that it will be easy to do in very rough water. Steve Holtzman Southern CA *************************************************************************** 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 17 2004 - 10:01:41 PDT
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