(I am pathologically unable to proof read) Hi Mark, I first saw such a program about 3 years ago at a New England meeting of USCG and other boating safety/rescue personnel. There were a wide range of data inputs, as you suggested, and their intent was to continue refining the program. Such programs are what are currently used to estimate maximum possible survival times given conditions and information about the victim's condition/equipage. For us, the single biggest drawback is that the program gives the maximum likely survival time plus some margin. Not what we want. In our workshops, we tell paddlers to test their gear in the cold water on which they plan to paddle. The idea is to get folks to pay attention to water temp and scale their gear, whatever combination they put together, to the temperature of the water in question. To me, this is really the only way to approach this problem. In the case of the 16 fishermen cited in the paddlers cold water page http://paddler.nirvana4u.com/Cold_war.pdf , it is likely that they died from cardiovascular failure due to being kept upright instead of horizontal when brought aboard the rescue ship. We have cited this case in our workshops for two decades. This was the case for the sprint paddler that died after swimming to shore and standing up upon reaching shore. In 1983, one of our paddlers swam for about 45 minutes in 40 degree water at Thanksgiving, Narragansett Bay, RI. He finally made it ashore and walked up to the nearest house. Knocked on the door, door open, and he passed out on the porch. He survived because he was wearing a neoprene farmerjohn that acted enough like a space suit to suppress the sudden loss of blood pressure that killed the flatwater paddler. It also greatly slowed his heat loss while struggling in the water. These were both top notch athletes. The fellow that survived wrote his story for us for ANorAK. I was editor at the time. We never allowed these stories to disappear-We felt we had an obligation to our fellow paddlers to document every case-no matter how painful!! After some time in cold water, there is fluid volume loss, weakened heart function, loss of vascular tone. Blood volume goes to lower trunk/legs when victim leaves the water. Heart has nothing to pump-you are dead! Chuck Sutherland *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:54 PDT