Adam Bolonsky

Here's a 3-minute podcast on an area good for beginners and low intermediates: Manchester, Ma.'s Chubb Island and West Beach. Includes lat. and long. coordinates for gps and Google Earth users plus a description of where to land near Chubb Island to break for lunch and take a swim. There's also a link to a downloadable Google Earth map of the area that describes a dozen inshore Manchester paddling destinations, plus the locations of the area's four put-ins. Download the podcast at http://seakayakingdotnet.podbean.com/2009/...-manchester-ma/

night_nav_podcast.mp3

look for the reloaded file below

I've been testing SPOTS with others here in the US for the past year. SPOT works fine so long as you have a clear view of the sky. Clear view includes lack of fog, no rain, and a high cloud ceiling. A couple of weeks ago in fog off Cape Cod my SPOT's transmission failure rate was nearly 55%. SPOT's good for checking in with friends and family daily on long trips. Its interface is funky though. You don't get a clear and simple indication that a message got sent. If the weather is poor, your messages aren't going anywhere. SPOT doesn't use doppler to send its signals to the GEOS satellites. That makes its reliability poor in bad weather. If you really need a failsafe rescue summoner, PLB (personal locater beacons) and EPIRPBs are virtually foolproof. But you don't have the option with them of sending simple "I'm OK" messages to friends and family. All EPIRPBs and PLBs do is summon rescue personnel. There's no fun in them. You only use them when the defecation hits the oscillation. You can rent PLB's for about $25 a week from plbrentals.com. Registration of plbs with the feds is free.

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...

Thanks, Jon. I liked especially your practice suggestion that others listen to you with a chart in hand to see if they can pinpoint your location and transit you're describing. Here's the link to the audio files the Coast Guard puts onine here in Massachusetts if anybody wants to listen in on recordings of maydays, etc. between the Coast Guard and mariners. There are many different types of calls there: http://cgvi.uscg.mil/media/main.php?g2_itemId=52 In the same vein, here's the links to youtube videos I made using the above, basically by listening to the audio several times over and transcribing what everybody said: http://www.youtube.com/user/DeepSixDave I can remember our group making a securite call a few years back off Cape Ann in heavy fog. We made the call twice, as you'd expect, with say a minute or two's pause between each broadcasdt. Wouldn't you know it but another boater barks in on 16 with something along the likes of "Shut up, sea kayaker, we heard you the first time. Put your toy away and pipe down." Very disconcerting, to say the least, and embarassing too, to our radio user, who was learning how to make a securite call and was making a call for the first time. Stuff like that can make you gun shy on the air. But the call was legit and necessary....

Thanks for the info, Jon. I've always thought securite calls are a great preemptive call to make in bad weather, and I was interested to hear that you'd made one. Any chance the Coast Guard kept a recording of it? I think it would be a great file to post if they did. I know they post on their website a lot of audio recordings of past maydays, pan-pans, etc., all available for free download. I think securite calls are of real value to sea kayakers. In my experience, they are a also good way to practice radio use that goes beyond the usual spectrum of communicating within a group. It can be a real intimidating experience (one gets so self conscious!) knowing that you're about to make a blind broadcast not to someone in particular, but to all nearby mariners. Listen in on 16 long enough (as you doubtless know), and you're sure to hear a securite. Problem is, at least in my experience, is that you usually you only hear Coast Guard securite calls announcing events like the presence of derelict boats, or something, posing hazards in shipping channels, or of dredging operations in commercial transit routes. You almost never get the sense that a securite can lead to two-way communcations. Problem is, hearing only CG securites doesn't pose all that useful a model to a kayaker, as there's almost no followup or response. CG securites simply go into dead air and hang there. The closest I've heard to a good model for sea kayakers on how a two-way securite migtth work is to listen in channel 13, which large vessel captains use from bridge to bridge. But their communications (mostly stuff like "you go port, I'll go starboard") are delivered in such crisp shorthand it's hard to use them as a model. Not to belabor this, but would you mind taking a minute to paraphrase the securite calls you made? I think they would be useful to read, especially for anyone who wants to make a securite call themselves one day.

Thanks for the post and link, Ed. There were a lot of factors at play that day for us in Woods Hole: a decade's-plus paddling experience, on my part, leading to a cavalier attitude about Woods Hole, for one, plus the group dynamics of no one really wanting to take charge all day (hey, where's the fun in that, unless you're a control freak?) We made the right decision to make that pan-pan call, as far as I'm concerned: the late hour, the dropping air temps, my Reynaud's crippling my hands, and the stark fear of our one paddler who felt that she couldn't manage the final crossing, and then, understandably, refused to leave the eddy cover of the daybeacon riprap. I've always held that a pan-pan call is legit based on your subjective take on your situation at the moment. The Coast Guard always responds, though perhaps not with onwater resources. What got to me the most was our group's collective inexperience using towing methods in fast tidal rips. The standing waves downstream were large, the runout was fast and worse and far west, and the ferry angle for the three of us to maintain with a tandem tow would have been dangerous to test and discover, I think. Anyone have towing experience, tandem or otherwise, in fast rips? Standard procedure in rips when visited for trainings, I've heard, is to preposition rescuers well downstream to rescue those who dump. But what to do when crossing the rip as a group is not an option, and yet you have to cross nonetheless.

Thanks for posting this trip report, Jon. Sounds like it was a lot of fun. To me the most interesting detail was that the CG came out to patrol after you made your securite calls. What was your reaction to their having done that?

So it comes time for three of us, including a transplant from Washington State who's spent time in Deception Pass, to cross Woods Hole at near max tide near dusk after working our way up the west side of the Elizabeths in some pretty stiff northeast winds. We'd thought of crossing higher in Woods Hole, more to the southeast, but the East Gutter had already lowered its level below sea level and was pumping too hard to punch through. The current in the hole is running fast, the standing waves are up, and what isn't fast-moving and slick is quite rough. The red nun and green can nav buoys are leaning over on their ears, dropping their foreheads into the water and all pointed at Buzzards Bay. We cross the first 2/3's of Woods Hole and duck in behind the riprap at the daybeacon to regroup when we realize there is no way one of us has the mental or physical energy to cross the last third: the fastest and most constricted part of Woods Hole with the most consquential runout, to the west, into the Channel. Two of us are willing to go for it, the third absolutely is not, and now we are in a pickle. We debate a tandem tow and nix it: the ferry angle will be too hard for all three boats to maintain stimultaneously, and never having towed before in fast current where a capsize is highly likely, we scotch the idea, fearful of rescue ropes in the water and then all three of us capsizing ass-over-teakettle into and all over one another. Then we debate crossing back over to the Elizabeths and riding the eddy east, to cross higher in Woods Hole, but this means recrossing water that unnerved the third of us now scared, wide-eyed, and paralyzed with fright. So it's time to call the Coast Guard. Up to the top of the daybeacon riprap to make the call to the station at Woods Hole. The call takes about fifteen minutes to make, much of the time taken up by the watchstander on standby (we're now on VHF 22A) as he works out with the officer in charge whether we have life and limb in immediate danger. Once we tell them we are all wearing pfd's and drysuits they become less interested. But by now we have about half an hour of daylight left. The Coast Guard asks if there is a tow service they can call for us. We're about to answer No when two fishermen in a center-consoler upstream jigging for striped bass drop back in the current, duck in behind the riprap and pluck the scared paddler from the water, loading onboard the kayak she's in after quickly discovering there's no way to tow from their stern or alongside without its capsizing. So on the VHF we have to cut the Coast Guard short even as they're asking for a description of the boat that has done the rescue: the two of us still in the water haven't got much time to make it back into Woods Hole. So with a quick "sea kayaks Woods Hole OUT", we pack up the gear, get into the cockpits, secure the skirts and slingshot wobble across the Hole to Devils Foot and finally into the anchorage. A bunch of grad students from the MLB have lit a campfire on the shores of the island and are grilling burgers in the lee of a cluster of rocks and boulders. Dumb luck. Of the three of us, I was cold enough not to have sufficient hand strength left to open a day hatch and retrieve some gear. Likely the Coast Guard would have come for us, but I think not until after dark, when we all three would have been a lot colder. This was at the time a Pan-Pan that would have only become a Mayday once we started getting hypothermic. Running down the west side of the Elizabeths to Weepecket from Woods Hole in a brisk northeasterly can be a hell of a lot of fun (big steep swell!), and working back upwind a workout, but at that point that job's barely done: that crossing when you're spent and cold is pretty tough. Woods Hole sure can be a fun place, but when you're not looking for fun and merely want to get back to the put in, it can be a nemesis. After we packed the cars we took a drive over to station Woods Hole to knock on the door and says thanks to the Coast Guard. But the place was locked up like a zoo: high fences, spotlights, razor wire, the guard shack dark, the boathouses themselves presenting a wall to the road. So on to pasta dinner lakeside in Falmouth, and the debrief of what went wrong where and when.

Did you recently lose your SOT off Rockport? If so, give me a call: Adam (781) 643-9966 The wind and tide carried it through Straitsmouth Gap, then pushed it into the rocks in Lighthouse Cove. Looks like the bow painter parted or was cut.

Try to pick us up on the radio. Ch. 72, let's say we'll answer the callsign "NSPN Tucks Point", assuming that my radio works and that David brings his.

What was in the stomach? Were you trolling a tube and worm or some other sort of swimmer? KUDOS! More sea kayakers should fish...those that don't don't know what they're missing!

Link to Boat US MMSI: MMSI

West Marine is selling Icoms at good prices: M32LI: $139 M34 (submersislbe, floats): $159 (rebate) M73 (submersible, 6 watts): $189 (rebate) M88 (submersible; 15-hour battery) $229 (rebate)

I have to disagree, Suz. There were new photos, new links, more personal background on Tim Guttmann. Also there was a link to a mayday VHF call made during a drowning -- which teaches what audio clipping during a frightened VHF mayday sounds like, and how other boaters, by virtue of listening in on 16, add to rescue efforts. Monday morning quarterbacking often gets bad, and is too easy to do. There's too often Darwin award commentary after a fatality. And it happens as much here as anywhere else. As for driving traffic to a site: where else to store that many photos, links, videos and audio?

Thanks for your comments, Chuck. I appreciate especially your perspective that the more often we return okay from challenging conditions the more confident we become, perhaps to a fault. What a horrible accident. They both seemed to have been such fine fellows.

Photos and links to the Biddeford Pool tragedy last year. Some of the commentary on message boards in the wake of that accident last year, including, at least in my view, on this very site, was pretty revolting. Links and photos on my kayak fishing blog at North American Kayak Fishing Moroever, on a related note, VHF Ch. 16 audio from a past boating fatality (scuba), while in progress, on Long Island Sound: Mayday Audio. The latter might have more than prurient interest. Making a mayday call places an understandably panicked caller in contact with the Coast Guard; as nearby boaters listen in, they can break in on the call to offer clarification and assistance, as happened in this case.

JIS 7 waterproof handheld VHF with a big fat display, WX, Hi-LO and squelch control: $79 Also: 12-gauge aerial flare gun kit with 4 shells and 4 handheld flares, all by ORION: $54 At your local West Marine off most main highways, and most recently in the downtowns of small port towns like Marblehead and, for a recent year or two, Gloucester.

4:00 pm on. Come one, come all. Water's cold. Joe Pizza is a good place for a pie afterwards.

Anybody wants to borrow a SPOT to try for two weeks, contact me. The demo units include unlimted sms text and email messaging with embedded Google Maps, to ten friends via either their cell phones or email accounts.. I have five units to lend out. No strings attached. Only thing I ask: if you need a unit mailed to you, you pay shipping from my house and back. Adam adambolonsky at yahoo dot com

Bob - contact me offline so we can make arrangements for you to pick it up after work. Adam

Derek Moore at SPOT has said it's okay for me to lend out my SPOT demo unit to local paddlers. All functions on the unit (HELP, OK, Track) are active but for the 911 function. For now I'd prefer to lend out the unit only to paddlers I've met face-to-face either on a trip or at a skills session or knocking around at places like Walden, Cape Ann, etc. Otherwise no strings attached. Chances are I'll have another four units or so to lend out next week. I AM NOT BEING PAID for this. Contact me via email adambolonsky at yahoo dot com or by phone if you have my number.

We can share compasses; in fact, the more compasses the better. That way we can pass them around and everyone gets to learn the quirks of the many compasses out there: their differing lubber lines, adjustment screws if any, bezels, face plate markings, etc.

If anyone needs info on where to buy NavAids, send me an email. Charles River Canoe and Kayak carries them, but their riverfront store is closed for the season. (adambolonsky at yahoo dot com) Chances are you'll have to buy them direct from Charles Sutherland. Or buy them through NSPN up to a week before the workshop. As for compasses, Ritchie makes a good deck-mounted compass you can attach to your deck rigging. It has a course-minder outer bezel and costs around $70. As for handheld-orienteering compasses, if you go out to buy one and end up considering a model that costs more than about $30, you're probably spending too much money. Key though is to be sure you buy one that has a rotating outer ring and, if not a mirror, then siting notches. Handhelds are best for shooting bearings for triangulation. If you buy a NavAid on your own, first thing to do is throw away the book that comes with it. The book's more confusing than untranslated Latin text read with a heavy foreign accent.