Mark and All, Nice report! It was an exciting day, and these little adventures is why I love sea kayaking so much. You never know what's going to happen. I was about 15 feet to the left of Mark when the wave broke over the reef at Reef Point and a 3-4 foot wall of whitewash hit him. At first I thought he was going to side surf and slam into me, but he stalled out and went upside down despite bracing into the wave. I was hoping he'd keep his cool and roll up, and sure enough, he did. It was pretty cool watching the whole thing from so close. Steve Wilson sure looked beautiful for a split second while he was in that wave over the reef at Abalone Point. It looked like about a 4 footer. He made an attempt at a roll but came out. Knowing the reef pretty well, I knew there was a small but choppy safe zone between the reef and point where he'd wash out, so I paddled around the reef to be ready to help. By the time I got to Steve, he already had a plan and was swimming his way out, which was going to take some time. I came in to offer Steve a side-by-side assist back into his kayak. The first thing I asked him was if he had his paddle and he did, which made things so much easier and showed his experience with practicing rescues. With the side-by-side assist, Steve was back in the kayak so quickly that I can't even remember him doing it. It turned out the front float bag of his Mariner was only half inflated, so there was a ton of water in the kayak. We agreed to see if Steve could paddle himself into calmer water to make dumping or pumping easier, but with so much water in the kayak and 3 foot chop from surf breaking over the reef, he was unstable, bracing like crazy, and about to go back into the water, so I rafted back up with him. I remember noticing Dublin Dave wearing a tow belt around his waist earlier that morning, so I called him into our small safe zone to tow us out. Dublin quickly came in, hooked us up, and as he towed us out, Steve and I took turns pumping. Once enough water was pumped for Steve to be stable, he landed through 4 foot surf to dump the rest of the water out on the beach and launched to rejoin the group. I guess Steve had a close encounter with the rocks on the reef. He later mentioned that he felt the paddle hit the rocks as he went over, but didn't see any damage to the paddle. Then someone else in the group, maybe Kathy, noticed cuts in the back of his PFD, which were apparently from the rocks. But Steve didn't remember feeling any impact on his back. Duane Southern California *************************************************************************** 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 Sun May 04 2008 - 16:30:38 PDT
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