Re: Candid tale

Posted by LeeG on Mar 26, 2005

My real learning experiences were out there in Northern Calif. and even then fairly timid compared to most coastal paddlers. What was an eye opener for me on flooded kayaks was with a double here in the Chesapeake. Plain old basic t-rescues with a big glass double. TOO MUCH water to get out and too damn heavy for a single kayak to do a t-rescue,,front deck of my glass boat has a crack for the memory. The consequences of wet-exiting a double are much greater than a single regarding assisted or self-rescue since it's a lot harder to get all that water out and the relative flotation is much smaller. The real learner was a Wilderness Systems plastic double in the surf which has about 2/3 the volume of the Chesapeake double. I was paddling around with these guys in my boat and they were in a double. With some steep 2-3'waves just before the break they didn't coordinate bracing and over they went. Then things got very funny. The double was still incredibly stable so they just jumped right in sitting in a half full cockpit and started paddling. Then in slow motion the kayak rolled right over with the next wave. There was nothing they could have done. It must have been a ton of water moving with the wave and it rolled right over just like the wave. By then it made sense to just swim in and empty it at the beach. Except it was full of about 50lbs of sand and 1000lbs of water. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard to roll a kayak with 1000lbs of water over on a sloped beach but it is. Especially when the kayak is dumped on a small set and a few big ones are about to come in. I'm not sure the plastic bulkheads survived that landing.

In Response to: Candid tale by Scot on Mar 26, 2005

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