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Sea Kayaks Techniques Bulletin Board
Incident Report
Posted By: John Montgomery
Date: Tuesday, 27 May 2003, at 8:07 p.m.
What’s the one skill every kayaker needs to master? Or, put another way, what’s the first thing you’d teach a rank beginner who’s climbing into a kayak for the very first time? Easy, right? Well I failed at that skill this past weekend and I came damn close to paying the full price for my error(s).
It was a club trip, four days of surfing at Hobuck Beach on the Olympic Peninsula. I brought my Gliss (a plastic whitewater playboat) which I’ve owned for five years and surfed many times. The surf wasn’t huge Memorial weekend, but it could get difficult (steep, dumping) when the tide was out. On the third morning of the trip, I had a fantastic session and was feeling great. I like to spin the boat a lot and I had several rides with two or three 360’s, plus lots of back-surfing and enders. When you play aggressively in the surf or on a river, you roll a lot and sometimes you go for a swim. My roll has become pretty reliable and I haven’t swum in three years despite many days of Class III and IV white water paddling. That said, I truly believe it’s only a matter of time between swims if you push your limits.
After surfing for a couple of hours, I paddled in for a break and found A., a friend and fellow club member, also taking a breather. On the beach was his new Spyder, a surf-specific playboat with hard rails and fins. I have to say this is the most beautiful boat I’ve ever seen and I REALLY wanted to try it out. A. wanted to keep surfing, too, but he gave in to my begging and said, “Okay, but be back in five minutes.”
As I moved his boat out into the soup (so I wouldn’t break the fins when I climbed in), I asked A. if my skirt was going to fit. He said that he was using the same skirt that he’d used for his old Gliss, so chances were good my skirt would probably work, too. My skirt slipped on easily and I paddled out.
At first, I intended to stay inside the impact zone because the waves were growing steep with the ebbing tide, but just like that, a path opened up for me and I paddled out beyond the break. Once I was outside the break, I realized I was the only one there even though there were probably a dozen boats in the water at the time. I made three quick tries to catch a ride (once straight ahead with my back on the rear deck, once with a hard diagonal angle, and once with a soft diagonal angle) and every time I got trashed. Rolling the boat was no problem but obviously, I wasn’t figuring out what I needed to do to catch these steep waves. I know what I would have done with my Gliss, but I couldn’t figure out what to do with the Spyder.
After getting stuffed three times in quick succession, I was breathing fairly hard and feeling frustrated with myself. The only thing I wanted to do right then was to get back to the soup for a breather and a chance to regroup. Just after starting in, I got hit from behind by a large, broken wave which immediately flipped me and surfed me upside down for a while. When the wave finally released me, I made two roll attempts and failed both times. Time to swim.
Just as I’ve done so many times in the river (for real) and in the ocean (for practice), I held my paddle in one hand and pulled on the grab loop with the other. It didn’t budge. I let go of my paddle (with the shaft still held in the crook of my arm) and pushed and pulled on the grab loop now using both hands. Still, it wouldn’t release. I worked on it furiously but nothing happened. Not even close. It seemed like my skirt was glued to the coaming. By now, I was really hurting for air and that’s when I began to panic.
At this point, I think I actually pushed my paddle away from me so I could attack the grab loop completely unhindered. It didn’t help. With each passing second my panic grew more intense and my thinking less logical. I wasn’t thinking about why my skirt wasn’t coming free. I wasn’t thinking about trying to roll again. I was just struggling with the last of my strength. (Actually, I remember having two very clear thoughts. The first was an image of myself, floating upside down in the boat, dead, my arms and body waving back and forth with each passing wave. The second thought was, “A. is going to be so pissed that I died in his new boat!”)
Anyhow, I was so desperate for air at this point that I let go of the grab loop and attempted to get my head up for air by dog paddling toward the surface. Amazingly, I gulped a mouthful of air before I went back under. (In retrospect, I’m not sure how I did this. I’ve practiced hand rolls (unsuccessfully) but this was no hand roll.) Then I pulled on the grab loop some more, but I’d pretty much accepted the idea that the skirt wasn’t coming off no matter how hard I pulled on it or in what direction.
I’m not really sure what happened next since I was in a state of extreme panic, not to mention hypoxia. I think what happened is that I grabbed the sides of the boat with both hands (not the coaming) and pushed down as hard as I could. That lifted my butt off the seat and I think it allowed me to get my feet slightly under me instead of tucked forward. With the help of my legs pushing against the floor or inner sides of the boat, I blew out of the cockpit and came up for air. (I’m pretty sure the skirt released from the right side of the coaming, not in the front by the grab loop.) What I do know for certain, is that I was very close to blacking out when I finally came free. After I was up, I saw a woman (not from my group) paddling toward me. She was still 30 or 40 feet away at that time so there’s a very good chance I would have passed out before she reached me for a bow rescue. If I had already passed out, I sincerely wonder how she could have possibly executed any sort of rescue. I was locked into my boat, upside down, and we were still a good ways from the beach.
Lessons: My, oh, my! Where do I begin?
Over-confidence was the root of it all. I was blinded by my ability to surf in my Gliss and also by my ability to roll. Because of this over-confidence, I failed to take even the simplest precaution when testing a new piece of equipment. I failed to appreciate the true hazard of the situation. I knew that if my roll failed, it was no big deal to go for a swim, but I didn’t stop to consider that the process of exiting this new boat was going to be different in any way from what I was used to. It was this attitude that led to a very dangerous level of complacency.
First, I was complacent in that I didn’t test the skirt to see if I could release it. That was critical. I’ve used the same skirt (a full neoprene Snapdragon, size L spray deck) for plastic boats by Necky, Wave Sport, and Prijon and it always works the same way. Grab the loop with one hand and pull out (forward) a little and then up. I have a very similar Snapdragon skirt for my fiberglass sea kayak, and it takes exactly the same motion and force to release the skirt from the coaming.
My skirt seemed to fit just fine when I pulled it over the coaming of the Spyder. In fact, I can barely pull my skirt into place on my Gliss with two hands but I can release it with just one hand. The Spyder turned out to be just the opposite. My skirt went on it easily, but getting it off was another matter altogether. Also, because of the fins, I couldn’t try the boat out on land before I got in it. I had to climb into the cockpit in the soup and that isn’t easy to do in a small playboat with waves washing in. Once I had the skirt on, I didn’t want to pop it off and risk a lapful of water from a wave. (Not because I’m afraid of water, but because I didn’t want to look stupid.) And finally, I felt a sense of hurry. I wanted to honor my promise to be back in five minutes. For these reasons (and an unhealthy dose of confidence), I completely dropped my guard and failed to determine whether I could release the skirt once I’d put it in place.
Apparently, I’ve also grown complacent (sloppy) in my skirt release technique. As it turns out, the coaming on the Spyder is much deeper than on my Gliss; roughly two inches deep by my estimation, versus ¾ to 1 inch deep in my Gliss and other plastic boats I’ve paddled. It’s also deeper than on my fiberglass sea kayak. Moreover, plastic boats (like my Gliss) also have very rounded edges around the coaming which means the skirt slips off if enough force is applied upward on the grab loop. Even my fiberglass sea kayak has a bit of flare to help the skirt slip off with upward force. I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the coaming on the Spyder was specifically designed the way it is in order to keep your skirt from blowing out even under the most extreme force. That only makes sense given how rough it gets in the surf. (It also makes sense because I’m sitting upright and sucking in breath after breath of wonderful air!) Anyhow, the only way to get my skirt off the Spyder is to pull forward until the elastic band fully clears the narrow edge of the coaming. If it doesn’t do that, no amount of upward force on the grab loop is going to make it pop. (In my efforts to release the skirt while capsized, I actually cracked the epoxy which glues the coaming onto the deck. However, I don’t think this was the reason I finally got the skirt to release.)
Later that day on the beach, I retested my skirt on the Spyder and discovered that it takes extreme forward force to pop it from the coaming. So much forward force, in fact, that I don’t think I would have gone out in the Spyder using my skirt even if I’d practiced releasing it several times on land. It’s just too tight for my strength even under the best conditions. By contrast, my friend’s skirt (made by Seals) seemed to come off with a normal (to me) amount of force. This may be because the Seals skirts are much flatter in design and it’s easier to get the elastic band out and away from the coaming. I don’t know. This is just conjecture on my part. I want to make it clear that I’m not knocking Snapdragon in any way. Their skirts are well-made and they work well. I like ‘em and I will continue to use them. Also, I have nothing bad to say about the Spyder. What a beautiful boat! It would be fun to try one again, this time with due respect for safety.
Finally, I don’t place any blame for this near accident on anyone but me. All the mistakes were mine alone, and it certainly wasn’t due to the conditions. What happened to me could have happened on a mirror calm lake. It could have happened on a river. The fact that it happened in the surf was inconsequential. As for my roll, it worked great the rest of the day. Yep, I went back out that afternoon and played just as aggressively as before, but you better bet I tested my skirt several times before I left the soup. Never mind that I’ve popped it off my Gliss hundreds of times before.
I offer myself as the poster child of bad examples and I feel very lucky to be alive. Hopefully, this story will be of some value as a learning tool and I look forward to your comments. John Montgomery
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