On Wednesday 21 March 2007 01:48, PaddleWise wrote: > As I have said so many times before, I believe the actual > effectiveness of a pfd in your typical sea kayaking scenario has been > greatly over inflated anyway. Overinflated it might burst - not nice at all ... On the other hand, if it isn't inflated, if it is the to-be-inflated type, it doesn't do much good, anyway :-)! When we rolled accidentally, as I've mentioned here before, in next-to-freezing waters, in a slow swell and small waves (2-3 ft), I am not sure at all I would have made it without the Chillcheater Aquatherm and the PFD, as the PFD made me float comfortly and kept my upper body warm, during those hours of waiting for help and rescue. It took over four hours, between entering the water and getting into the car, and them quite a while before we got out of the cold, wet clothes. Amazingly, we didn't even catch cold! Pictures here: http://foldingkayaks.org/gallery/The-rest (the first three pictures) Without the PFD I would have floated much lower, and then the waves would have rolled over my head more frequently, and I might not have returned to surface in time to avoid drowning. The Musto fleece hat kept the top of the head dry, even efter immersion - magic that was! The salt in the water made us float higher, too, of course. In a lake things could have been much more dangerous, as one is even less prepared for the accidental roll then. In addition, the fresh water is much less healthy to inhale, the doctors tell us, and one naturally floats lower, with or without pfd. As to rescue the traffic on most lakes is next to nil in wintertime, so that someone would find you, or even hear you, is less plausible. In addition to that a VHF would not work on most lakes, while a cellular would, maybe. The other day I saw a program on TV (Discovery, I think), that had all to do with death at sea, and among those interviewed was a young guy who belonged to a Hawai'ian outrigger team; all eight guys being in very, very good trim. Out training one day they accidentally rolled and ended up in the water (that it could be that easy to roll such a big canoe must have come as a shock to everyone). As nobody had a PFD on, nor much of anything else (t-shirt, shorts, possibly a scarf around the head) they, soon cooled down, even in that near-body-temperature water (32 C). They tried rolling the boat back, right-side up, but failed, and as there were no hand-holds on the bottom of the vaka they couldn't stay on, so they were forced to stay in the water, till rescue arrived, eventually. When help didn't seem to come, two took off, as they were champion swimmers - neither made it to shore. When help eventually showed up another guy was dead from hypothermia, and most of the rest were in a bad state. A death rate of 3 out of 8, just because no safety thinking was applied is appauling. It happened in fine weather, fairly close to land, and all were highly trained and highly motivated healthy young lads - none even 40, from the look of it! These guys evidently had the attitude, that Scott promotes, that safety gear is just cumbersome. A single VHF would most likely have saved everyone's life, a GPS would have told the authorities where they were (if they had had a cellular or VHF), an EPIRB the same, and PFDs would have kept their cores warmer, much warmer! Their PDFs could have been stoved onboard, for just such an occasion, as the boat seemed to be unsinkable ... These champion outrigger guys evidently had never tested their ability to get back into the boat, never ever had tried to roll it back while in the water, as a preparation to the event, if it accidentally got inverted. Safety-minded they were not! A small safety ama would have done wonders, by the way, and that they couldn't huddle in the water for warmth, being American macho men, to conserve heat, is just so ... American! The safety ama would have made the boat roll slower (in the reenactment it took les than a second - amazing!). With the gang sitting on the safety ama it would have been possible to roll it back. Then they would have faced a water-filled vaka, so they would have needed pumps and other safety equipment in dry bags, like some warm clothes, maybe warm fluid & food. Spare paddles would have been essential (all the others had floated away), in short things Scott, and many others, think are totally redundant. We do all do our own choices, and some learn by their own and others' mistakes, some just don't! Tord, Bagboater yahoo group *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************
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