Bob Volin wrote: I had the same experience several years ago. Joan and I each had three small (pocket-size) hand held flares that were just past their expiration dates. One or two of them fizzled, the rest did nothing at all. --- As a former combat search and rescue pilot, I'll weigh in here from a perspective of 300 to 500 feet above you and your capsized boat. The pencil flares that many of us carry to remain legal at night are about good as y'all discovered. The option would be to carry a birthday cake with a few dozen candles lit off, and wave it over your head. (In my case, there'd be more than a few dozen, but it wouldn't make much difference.) To be found in congested areas, you have to stand out from your environment, or my helo crew and I won't even begin to pull you out -- visually or physically. My choices for my own rescue: voice comms -- VHF, mobile phone for the same reasons as noted in the earlier thread. (Talk to me!) GPS, sure -- especially if I'm away from visual reinforcement -- like "close to red bell 42" vice a lat-long fix. (Tell me where you are, 'cause it's a big ocean out there, even in the Chesapeake Bay or in Long Island Sound!) For specific identification to back up a voice contact, or in the absence of voice contact, I'd use my old mil-spec ACR strobe. (Show me that you're not a boat or a floating birthday cake!) I've had my old ACR strobe since Viet Nam days, 40 years ago, and it still works fine. Hard to find batteries. Easily as good now, any ACR (http://www.acrelectronics.com/) C-Strobe or Firefly strobe unit. (No ACR affiliation -- just a very satisfied customer.) If I'm doing an Ed Gillet unsupported trans-PAC trip -- which I won't be! -- or if I were ten miles offshore looking for whales, a good EPIRB (emergency position-indicating radio beacon) or a PLB (personal locator beacon) -- something like ACR's new PLB with all the data in one package -- would be a gotta-have. Smaller, lighter better, probably bloody expensive, but how much do you pay for life insurance? (Have an internationally recognized system tells me where you are even if you can't!) But, for most of us, in local, inshore waters, a good set of hand-held flares (like those used on roadsides by state police, not the bloopy-fizzy things we all carry with our security blankets) for night ops that cover the rules. And a few cans of smoke (Pains-Wessex sells them, as do others) for daytime ops will make you stand out, and will give me a good wind indication, thank you very much. A strobe to add some continuum of visibility to the flares would be ideal at night. Something as simple as flourescent paint on your paddle blades will help me in low light or obscuration. And SOLAS-equivalent retro-reflective tape tabs on your PFD straps and hat would be lovely, thank you. (Made a night rescue in Southeast Asia in combat one time based on the lucky chance illumination of a downed pilot's reflective tape on his helmet. Of course, it made me into a bullet-sink, but that's another matter.) Consider your environment. Consider who might look for you. What will they see? (We had a man-overboard situation one day in low-key carrier operations at sea where a sailor lost his footing and wound up in the water. Everybody saw it, everybody saw him. And everybody helped by throwing life vests, mattresses, pallets, rafts, huge flares, etc. into the water to mark his spot. Problem was, he was now somewhere in the middle of a half-mile wide flaming debris field of rescue stuff and flotsam and jetsam, and it took us a half-hour to find the poor bugger. So figure out how to stand out in that debris field -- or in some of the urban waters in which we paddle. Comms, active short- or long-source visual night signals, smoke as a day signal (how many PWCs emit a quarter mile stream of flourescent smoke?) and passive identifiers like flourescent paddle blades (that can be seen in fog or haze long before anything else) and retro-tape. Think it through. Where are you potentially going to be if you encounter trouble. From 300 feet, your head and frantically splashing arms are, at best, another whitecap to me in my helo. Don't need no more whitecaps. Got lots. Stand out! Tell me where you are! Show me where you are! Or I might wind up leaving you where you are 'cause I can't find you -- and I really don't like that. Joq *************************************************************************** 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 Sat Jul 21 2007 - 05:07:09 PDT
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