JeffBC
Posts: 5799
Joined: 2/12/2012
From: Canada
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quote:
ORIGINAL: LadyHibiscus
This whole venture is close to shore and SHALLOW water, certainly twenty feet or less, and I am a good treader of water, and swimmer. I also don't panic. The water in Lake Huron is cold, but not wet suit cold in September. These are sit IN kayaks, the sit ON ones I am fine with! I am not actually worried about tipping the kayak, the water will be calm close in, it's the IDEA of being trapped. Someone drowns in a kayak near me every summer, and yeah they're usually doing something stupid in a spillway, but STILL. I would be fine just swimming to shore, or shallower water, should I get astoundingly clumsy.
OK then.. refining my answer.
Deep water means anything over your nose. If you can't stand upright in it and calmly empty your boat then you need to know how to do a deep water re-entry. Or... as in this case... you simply need to be willing to abandon the boat and swim to safety and then let someone else go tow it in (which is really hard paddling by the way). Here's what I'd recommend for safety equipment.
Life vest: This goes without saying. Anyone who gets into a kayak without one is, in my opinion, a statistic waiting to happen.
Skirt: Don't use one. The only purpose of the skirt is to keep big waves from swamping your boat. It's a hassle otherwise.
Tow Rope: about 15' long with a carabiner attached at each end. Used to tow now defunct boat back to shore for emptying :)
Paddle Leash: It's a pain in the ass when they float away from you. Rig a leash around one wrist or to the rigging of the boat. Also, paddles can be expensive. Ours were only mid-range carbon fiber and they were $200 each. So losing one is expensive too.
Without a skirt, the way you get out from under an upside down kayak is you simply reach down with both hands and put them on the edge of the cockpit combing and lift yourself out of the boat. It's the same way you'd life yourself out of an arm chair of you were a bit tired just upside down. It really, really, isn't complicated since you're not the panicky type there's really no way you could "get trapped" -- particularly without a skirt. Practice one or twice in 4' of water to get the feel of it and you'll see instantly that there's really nothing to be afraid of.
If you want to be more "pro" it'd look like this.
Still no skirt: No point and it's hot and a hassle.
Recovery gear: Tucked in the rigging just behind your cockpit combing we rolled up a paddle float and the bilge pump. You MUST make sure you it is actually clipped to the rigging. Don't trust simply tucking anything under the rigging unless you don't care about losing it.
How the recovery works is not complicated. You swim back to the boat and roll it over which isn't hard to do from outside the boat. IF you find it hard, you can always jam the paddle under the rigging and then reach over the boat from the other side and use the paddle as a lever while you lean backwards. Once the boat is upright, you rig the paddle float to the end of the paddle and make the impromptu outrigger setup I just talked about above. Then you jam the other blade of the paddle under the rigging just behind the cockpit. Presto... much more stable kayak. Now you use the bilge pump and empty out most of the water and use the combination of outrigger and kayak to climb back in. Really, the only risk is embarrassment since it's easy to put your weight on the far side of the boat as you climb in and roll it over the other way :) Again, this can be practiced in 7' of water to get the hang of it and is, in and of itself, a lot of fun.
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