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Sea Kayaks Techniques Bulletin Board
Re: Another Lemon
Posted By: Robert N Pruden In Response To: Another Lemon (Davis)
Date: Wednesday, 2 March 2005, at 5:47 a.m.
: From the report in the link;
: Hall paddled out to sea, searching for hours before calling on his cell phone
: to his wife, Christina, in Rome, asking her to send for help.: Another act of poor judgement. The comm. lines were screwed up. They had no
: contingency prepared. This whole thing is a classic 3 lemon disaster;: lemon one: inexperienced paddlers in canoes on potentially rough water
: without a fast (less than one minute) pullout zone
: lemon two; reliance on support vessel rather than group management
: lemon three: not calling for coast guard and full support immediately: Pamela was on my first class of the season, and we had an older paddler go
: overboard and bang up her knee, such that after she capsized a second
: time, she developed hypothermia rapidly and we had to pontoon for a
: rescue. I swallowed my pride, and it was HARD, I had been in far more
: difficult rescues before with injured paddlers and I still think I did the
: right thing: I hailed the closest moored vessel I could find and asked for
: support. It was not a heroic thing to do, I have done rescues in high
: winds before, but I knew it was the RIGHT thing to do. She was on board
: the yacht within 2 minutes, in a warm blanket, awaiting a marine ambulence
: evac.....: We got through that mess by immediately requesting support, back up, not
: proving that we are superior guides. I think it also inspired Pam to
: become an avid safety proponent from her first outing and now as a full
: instructor who has surpassed me in paddling skills, I think the outcome
: was much better than proving I could be a hero that day.I don't see that as a measure of how much pride you had to swallow, I see it as a quick intelligent move made on a situation that easily could have been an example of what not to do, with payment made by cashing in on that woman's life. Your simple solution cured a simple problem because you used the best option available to you and didn't let the problem become something unmanageable except by the media. My other thought dwells on your high wind rescues. How old were the rescuees? That woman's age probably had soemthing to do with her hasty bid for hypothermia. I am guessing that she was pulled from the water in short order but still developed hypothermia rather quickly. Better to safer than sorrier.
Robert N Pruden
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