[Paddlewise] Why paddlers die.

From: John Kirk-Anderson <jka_at_netaccess.co.nz>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2011 21:34:21 +1300
I'm looking to repeat a presentation that I ran for local sea paddlers on 
Cold Shock, Swim Failure and Hypothermia, as a way of educating them on the 
real risks they face when out of the boat.

My objective is to highlight that, in our water temps, hypothermia was not 
likely to be the almost immeadite situation that most people think of when 
they consider the problems they could face. Hypothermia, or "Mountain 
Exposure", IS a big problem for those in trouble on land, due to our exposed 
conditions and sudden weather changes, and this has no doubt contributed to 
paddlers thinking about that.

My problem is, I have lost my original presentation and there were three 
examples that I had used that I can no longer find.

One was a situation where two canoes were being paddled on a (probably North 
American) lake when one capsized and by the time the other one turned around 
to help the paddler had died, caused by cold shock.

One was a story of several US Marines (I think) who drowned on a river 
following a boating accident, possibly during the Second World War, swim 
failure.

I can't remember what I used as the hypothermia example, so I'm open to 
suggestions.

I'm hoping that the combined knowledge of Paddlewise could find these, or 
other, examples to help. They will be used as brief case studies to catch 
attention.

Cheers

JKA

John Kirk-Anderson
Banks Peninsula
New Zealand
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Received on Fri Jan 28 2011 - 00:34:31 PST

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