Re: [Paddlewise] August Sea Kayaker

I'll answer Brad and Craig here. Brad first:

Andy was using a Nigel Dennis Explorer. there was not much of a load in it, maybe several pounds in a day hatch, plus wheels for the ferry. I don't think of it as a weathercocking boat but perhaps I may just sit very subtly to the side and not notice it if it occurs. Andy had lots of good tips offered but once he got in the zone of misery and fear, there was nothing he could do to implement them. His voice got higher. His statements more truncated. His neck stiff and torso rigid. I have not read a better article on paddling than the 3 part Mind Over Water series in American Whitewater, written by Doug Ammons. Andy's fear responses were so well described in Doug's article that I just happened to be reading?one of the pieces at the time, so I knew what was going on. The articles appeared in the November/December 2007; March/April 2008; and May/June 2008 issues. I highly recommend anyone to go well out of your way to read them.

At it's most basic, Andy lost control as he succumbed to his sea sickness misery and could not come back. I would rate his physical condition as outstanding. He is young and climbs, runs and was confident.?But he?was further eroded by fear, until he?had become completely reliant on our services. Ironically, last year one of his rescuers found himself totally in the same condition?and was the subject of an hour long tow session to get him back to the beach at Cape Flattery. That epic also was not fun.?Sea sickness?happens to some of us and it will take everything you have and more. I believe Sea Kayaker has some medical professionals among its readership and would love to see them recruit one to do a writeup on the condition.

I have been a part of at least half a dozen sea sickness events while paddling and they are very difficult to deal with. The first one I offered someone who was slowly going down hill a Tums which she took and she felt much better. I gave a man a Tums and he reported no more ill effects. A friend got sea sickness as his prescribed patch fell off due to oily skin and he refused my Tums and he withered to the point my wife had to raft up and I had to tow him from Portage head to Shi Shi beach. That same guy a couple years later required the same raft and tow coming back from a trip at Cape Flattery, but I had 3 others tow him and paddled next to the rafted pair encouraging him to wake up and get it together because he would very shortly be going into the surf zone on his own. He made it in fine, a bit wobbly though.

I view whitewater and sea kayaking as very different sports. When you are in the middle of Rosario Strait and the waves jack up, the eddy is a long way away. I have a good friend who is no stranger to class 4 whitewater get bug eyed at Cape Flattery and he said it was way more challenging than he thought it would be. Coming from a sea kayaking background to whitewater I have the same impression. Class 3 was very hard whitewater for me to do for awhile. My friend has been very good to me when I've been challenged on the river. I always thought Deception Pass was fast, that is until I was going 20 miles an hour down a steep drop. 

I agree that whitewater paddlers don't see the whole deal with sea kayaking. When the water goes out of the mountains in August and September around here they start showing up at the beach to surf. Alot of them are starting to convert to sea paddling at least for a few months and they start to get it. This year the whitewater has been exceptional as a high snowpack and a cooler spring have kept the streams at sustained flows and it is really hard to want to do anything else right now. I've been flagged by 15 mile river days because when I absolutely have to make certain lines I'm paddling very hard to do them.

I'm a social creature so solo paddling is not in my skill set.

Cheers,

Rob G

-----Original Message-----
From: Craig Jungers <crjungers_at_gmail.com>
To: Bradford R. Crain <crainb_at_pdx.edu>
Cc: rcgibbert_at_aol.com; kdruger_at_pacifier.com; paddlewise_at_paddlewise.net
Sent: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:24 am
Subject: Re: [Paddlewise] August Sea Kayaker


On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 9:35 AM, Bradford R. Crain <crainb_at_pdx.edu> wrote:


?Just got around to reading "A Series of Capsizes" by Rob Gibbert in the
August 2008 issue of Sea Kayaker . Nicely written article and very thorough.
I noticed several times that the capsizee was having troubles with weathercocking, but there was no explanation of the cause. I am very curious what the possible cause and cure could be. 


I wondered if "Andy" had loaded the boat incorrectly. I would have thought that the experienced paddlers would have noticed the weathercocking and showed him how to deploy the skeg (if there was one... apparently not). No rudder and no skeg. Not very many boats with neither of those so balancing the load would be an important issue. And edging would be an issue, too.

White water paddlers - and "Andy" had most of his experience in canoing white water not kayaking according to the article - don't have to learn to edge their boats to make them turn. In fact, the issue is often how to stop them from turning; once they get the bit in their teeth, so to speak, a w/w kayak can turn all by itself and it takes a lot of effort to make it stop. Rob doesn't mention which boat it was, but perhaps if "Andy" had simply set the boat slightly on edge he wouldn't have exhausted himself making all those sweep strokes.

Also, white water kayaking experience is a wonderful teaching tool but one thing it does not do is help you with your physical conditioning. You learn all about eddies, bracing, rolling, and ferrying but there isn't a lot of paddling. In fact, if you only paddle in the rapids and never paddle on the quiet water (which a LOT of w/w paddlers do) then sooner or later the take-out will show up anyway. White water paddling does not prepare you for a 15 mile slog down-current into the wind. Go watch paddlers on the Deschutes or Wenatchee Rivers and you'll see them laying back and relaxing between rapids or sitting in a line in the eddy waiting for their turn on the wave. They tend to be sprinters not marathoners.
?

The article certainly causes one to re-evaluate the pursuit of solo paddling.


Or to have more experience. That passage has a series of possible nasty places including "bird rocks" (which Rob says they passed - apparently with few problems), the shelf they hit, and Cattle Pass (between Lopez and San Juan Island). If there is any wind at all then you are likely to encounter rips and wave trains somewhere along that route because you paddle almost every direction (except easterly) on the trip. I'd make that paddle solo (I've paddled sections of it) but I'd want to do it on a day when the conditions were acceptable to me (little or no wind) and expected to remain so. I'd never do it in the spring when conditions are so unsettled and when my own conditioning and skills are at a minimum.

I thought one of the strong points in Rob's article was the implicit understanding that just paddling white water is not an automatic ticket for a strenuous trip in a sea kayak. White water paddlers often denigrate sea kayaking as "Class I" but they often just don't understand. As "Andy" pointed out in the article, you can usually scout a river and see where paddlers are having trouble (or likely to) but in sea kayaking you can't just pick up and portage around the bad spots. And there is no quiet pool at the end.


Craig Jungers
Moses Lake, WA
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