Nick Schade wrote: >The leader in the dragon boat appears to have given up his PFD and thus his life in an effort to save his charges. To me, this indicates that the students were well served by trusting his leadership. Do we have any indications that the teacher/coaches took this adventure lightly? Obviously they did not take it seriously enough, but that is almost always the case when bad stuff happens. With a little more regard for dangers most accidents would not happen. With a little more regard for dangers most of us would not enjoy kayaking as much as we do. > > Imo, this discussion wasn't about a "little more regard for dangers." Your response came on comments made not about specific actions of this event but on the comments made by myself and Tony regarding blind trust placed by novices in their instructors and leaders as well as about unqualified, overconfident "trip leaders" who think they are qualified to lead a novice group into such conditions. PaddleWise was established to be able to discuss these situations where hopefully paddlers can learn from them. And for anyone who may have missed the specific actions, this is what I got from the information reported here about this incident.... Two teachers with thirteen students were out to attempt "to set a new record," in heavy seas, "ice slabs floating freely" on the surface, water temps less than 36 degrees F, gusting wind, heavy seas, no wet suits or dry suits - apparently no means for signaling emergency - rescue coming in the form of a female student who somehow, after capsizing, managed to fight her way 500 meters against "heavy seas," fortunately reach shore and then run 1 km to a store to raise the alarm (contact SAR). When I see this, I think safety was not a primary consideration. I don't even think it was secondary. In the case of instructors with students, my opinion is that safety should be the primary consideration, ahead of setting any new records. As for giving up a pfd to a student who was in trouble, I would imagine the parents of that student would say that was the least the teacher could have done in a deadly situation. I'm sorry it cost him his life. Even sorrier that someone didn't look at the situation beforehand and say "let's go for the record another day." I would like for paddlers to take from this the strength to say "no, I don't like the looks of this and you can call me chicken, but I'm not going." Trip leaders need to be honest in evaluating their abilities in the given situation. If he/she takes a group of students into the above conditions (as I read from the reports), they need to re-evaluate their leadership skills. If they survive. Jackie *************************************************************************** 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 Wed Feb 23 2011 - 18:13:56 PST
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