Boston Harbor Rescue

[spuglisi]

use of message board:

write your message. go get a beer. if you still want to post it after the beer is gone, go ahead and do it, otherwise delete.

Excellent advice...and yet one more reason to have a beer

[rick stoehrer]

use of message board:

write your message. go get a beer. if you still want to post it after the beer is gone, go ahead and do it, otherwise delete.

Excellent advice...and yet one more reason to have a beer

...reasons? we don't need no stinkin' reasons!!

key west ale ROCKS the fat mad house!

[BOB L]

"Confidence is the feeling we have before we fully and truely understand the situation" just might truely fit in this case.

Bob L

[PeterB]

"With three or more paddlers on the water in rough conditions sometimes the only way to communicate is via vhf" is a truly scary statement: I second Ed's comments re: communication among paddlers.

Well excuuussse me! I'll try not to say anything more that could be construed as "truly scary"! I think I'll just shut up now until I go to Kayak Camp this summer and learn all those hand signals. How's this one: finding myself in a sea so large that every other stroke involves a brace and "afraid" I signal my companions who are in the same conditions by dropping my paddle and stick my fist under one arm and do the chicken wing with the other. Oh, yes I then capsize! Maybe this last signal should be added to the list too?

if you have a dismissive view of hand signals: and/or if you find yourself in a sea so large that a hand signal is unsafe, as it takes your hand off your paddle, how do you propose to use a vhf?

Communication: can you communicate with your fellow paddlers: by voice &/or hand signals, at all times?

Line of Sight: can you see your fellow paddlers at all times ?

Avoidance: are you recognizing problems and avoiding them rather than reacting to problems that, unforeseen , come at you.

Position of maximum usefuless: are you positioned such that you may be helpful to your fellow paddlers and they to you?

If the answer these is pretty consistently: “Noâ€, as is indicated by much of what I've read here, more attention to these would be far more useful than relying on VHF.

[Gcosloy]

if you have a dismissive view of hand signals: and/or if you find yourself in a sea so large that a hand signal is unsafe, as it takes your hand off your paddle, how do you propose to use a vhf?

Communication: can you communicate with your fellow paddlers: by voice &/or hand signals, at all times?

Line of Sight: can you see your fellow paddlers at all times ?

Avoidance: are you recognizing problems and avoiding them rather than reacting to problems that, unforeseen , come at you.

Position of maximum usefuless: are you positioned such that you may be helpful to your fellow paddlers and they to you?

If the answer these is pretty consistently: “Noâ€, as is indicated by much of what I've read here, more attention to these would be far more useful than relying on VHF.

You only need one hand to use the VHF.

Answering only for myself I would say yes to the last three and frequently no to the first unless I employ the radio. I would say that a significant number of paddlers in the NSPN have never heard or reviewed hand signals. Now maybe that's a bad thing. Maybe that reveals a hole in the NSPN mission that needs to be filled. I have been paddling for 5 years with NSPN members on formal as well as informal trips and never once heard about hand signals or seen them employed!

[Bill Gwynn]

How's this one: finding myself in a sea so large that every other stroke involves a brace and "afraid" I signal my companions who are in the same conditions by dropping my paddle and stick my fist under one arm and do the chicken wing with the other. Oh, yes I then capsize! Maybe this last signal should be added to the list too?

I think you have misunderstood this hand signal. You use just one hand/arm...the same fist goes under the same armpit, then flap the elbow to indicate you are chicken/afraid.

None of the hand signals require you to take both hands off your paddle. The majority of these hand signals are common sense and I am sure we have all used some of them either on the water or just in our daily lives.

[Gcosloy]

I think you have misunderstood this hand signal. You use just one hand/arm...the same fist goes under the same armpit, then flap the elbow to indicate you are chicken/afraid.

None of the hand signals require you to take both hands off your paddle. The majority of these hand signals are common sense and I am sure we have all used some of them either on the water or just in our daily lives.

Hey Bill-just trying to bust some chops here-I think some need to lighten up and develop a sense of humor. However my main point still stands-nobody seems to use them in my experience. I was out in Salem Sound today with 13 other paddlers, quite a few of which more skilled and educated than I. A lot of communication going on most of it within earshot and for those out of earshot-use of the VHF. Aside from a sailboat that tacked right in front of us near Marblehead and who then received my favorite hand signal, none others were witnessed.

[EEL]

However my main point still stands-nobody seems to use them in my experience.

I don't doubt your experience. Just to complicate things, there are also a series of generally known paddle signals too, especially for beach landings in surf, and I suspect you have not seen those used either.

Aside from a sailboat that tacked right in front of us near Marblehead and who then received my favorite hand signal, none others were witnessed.

Well, that raises a series of issues doesn't it?

Ed Lawson

[Michael_Crouse]

This isn't about the rescue, this is about VHF radios. The thread seems to have drifted that way.

I think the problem with VHFs is when people use them as a substitute for other forms of communication. This includes, but isn't limited to hand signals, communication at launch, breaks, etc.. communication on the water, and just plain and simple looking around and being awaare of what's going on.

Simply put if you're in a group and you have to call the person in front on the VHF to tell him/her to slow down because the group is too spread out or they are unaware of a problem then you should put someone else up front who has the sense to turn around a check on the group.

As far as the sailboat goes that's another issue, but they do have the right of way and are the least manuverable vessel on the water (I'm not counting freighters, tankers, etc..). As someone who owned a sailboat I can tell you a lot of people have no idea why a sailboat moves the way it does. Years ago I took a power squadron safe boating course, just so I would know what the other boaters are doing out there. Kayakers being the self declared outcasts of the marine world doesn't fly, we're all out there together.

[jdkilroy]

"... As far as the sailboat goes that's another issue, but they do have the right of way... "

By far the simplest and safest rule for kayakers operating on waters navigable by any other type of vessel is "the rule of gross tonnage."

If at any time you feel it does not apply to you, your day of reckoning awaits you.

Regardless of your legal standing, assume that you are the burdened vessel and act accordingly.

Jon

[risingsn]

"... As far as the sailboat goes that's another issue, but they do have the right of way... "

By far the simplest and safest rule for kayakers operating on waters navigable by any other type of vessel is "the rule of gross tonnage."

If at any time you feel it does not apply to you, your day of reckoning awaits you.

Regardless of your legal standing, assume that you are the burdened vessel and act accordingly.

Jon

Well said, I teach that @ all of my entry level classes. Being dead right might not be the best thing.

[Adam Bolonsky]

I talked on the phone today to the coastguardsman who was running the 25' rescue boat that day, Phil Garrett, to find out what kind of paddlers the man and woman were. They were a young couple in their 20's who left from Hull Gut in two short plastic 10' or 12' rec boats. An east wind came up, the swell and waves grew, and they capsized.

It's kind of a non-story. Certainly not to the coast guard personnel involved, nor for the young couple. They were scared, hypothermic, and had been in the water a long time.

They were picked treading water and clinging to the red/green "TN" buoy roughly due east of Georges Island, on the edge of the approach channel to the Hull Gut and Hingham Harbor. The channel starts at Pt. Allerton in Hull and ends at the Fore River in Weymouth.

Garret, 24, has been a coast guardsman for six years. He surfs regularly off Egypt, Peggotty and Nantasket Beaches on the south shore. The woman hugged the crew when they pulled the couple aboard. Garret was taken aback by what they were wearing: a 3/2 shortie wetsuit on the woman, a rash guard and shorts on the man.

Can't hardly blame the two for getting into trouble. Their mistake are understandable, given their level of experience and skills. I give them credit for having the imagination to try kayaking, and going for it...

Garret says that rescues like these off Hull, of canoeists and recreational kayakers, are common. I'd say the young couple are no more blameworthy than the two young women who drowned in rec boats off Chatham several Columbus Day weekends ago.

There but the grace of....etc., etc., etc. Sea kayakers are not the only hotshots on the water simply by virtue of knowing how to sea kayak. We may be the latest gadgets on the water, but we're not by virtue of that always the most knowledgeable or the most careful.

God knows, a NOLS sea kayak instructor who takes kids to Patagonia to wilderness kayak for a month at a time recently blew a roll in calm water in the fog off Martha's Vineyard and had to be rescued...