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Seas At noon, as we drifted toward the Triangle, I saw some huge waves and knew from my previous experience that we should take care in our approach. We decided to head toward the inlet known as the Back River to get in some great surfing. The chart showed some submerged objects, so we angled to avoid them. I knew from some BCU surfing classes that a kayak has to be moving when big waves approach so it can accelerate ahead at the base of the waves and avoid getting lifted up by the steep wave faces. After getting a great ride, I took it easy and tried to hold my position so Mick could catch up to me, but I reduced my forward speed too much to get ahead of the waves coming up directly astern. They were well over eight feet. The first wave lifted my stern rapidly. I slipped downward on the face of the wave, and my bow plowed a couple of feet under water. While the bow was stuck in the trough, the wave pushed the stern. As my boat angled past 45 degrees, I executed a fast intentional capsize to avoid getting pitchpoled. It worked beautifully, and putting my body into the wave kept me from getting tossed end over end and allowed the submerged bow to pop free. All In I let the wave pass and decided to wet exit to give Mick a chance to rescue me. Unfortunately, a big wave hit him about the same time, and he bailed out too. We got to do our first all-in rescue. We started 35 feet apart in waves that were over six feet high, but managed to swim our kayaks together. Our all-in rescue worked just as well as it did when we practiced in calmer water. We knew just what to do and did it without letting any of our gear get away from us. By now we were in the middle of the Triangle and pleased our skills were holding up well. It was around 12:30 P.M., and for the next three hours, the wind, current and river ebb counteracted each other and held us nearly in the same position. We practiced dozens of rolls and just about every kind of rescue. We pumped out the cockpits repeatedly and even experimented with day hatch access. All of this was taking place in eight-foot breaking waves. While doing some T-rescues, we succeeded in emptying Mick’s boat, but by the time he was back in and ready to paddle, all the water had returned. Each wave put gallons of water back in. We finally decided to just get the boat upright, put the paddler back in, and then stabilize each other and pump. Two hand pumps made the job a bit faster. During the T-rescues in those conditions, raising the bow to empty a boat worked very well since the waves basically did all the work of lifting the cockpit above water to drain. Depressing the stern of an inverted boat to empty it failed because the boat was too hard to control, and on a slippery hull, the swimmer could easily get washed away. I was thankful to have a paddle leash. I tried just holding our paddles during some of the reentries, and it was very difficult to do. We needed most of our effort focused on avoiding capsize (not that it didn’t happen a few times anyway), and the extra effort to keep paddles from being yanked out of our grip by the ocean was often too much. Stowing them under deck lines or bungees was only marginally successful, as they still often came free. One portion of the back of Mick’s borrowed kayak was lacking a deck line. As we were finishing one rescue, and I was stabilizing the stern of his kayak, that lack of line cost me a grip and Mick a second dunking. There’s a value of deck lines running completely around the perimeter. Rescue Practice I had previously practiced hand-of-god rescues on Mick until I could do it quickly. It paid off in the Triangle. When Mick capsized just as we pushed away from a completed rescue, I had a chance to use it for real. A short time later, and in some significant waves, he did a great one on me too. We tried some bow-presentation rescues, which went well too, and we executed them without overshooting or crashing into each other. To practice scoop rescues, we took turns simulating an injured paddler. The technique was challenging in waves, but it worked as designed. In the middle of the Triangle, the churning water was making it tough to time a roll. Fortunately, we had practiced rolls often in a variety of conditions, and both of us have solid rolls on both sides. If a roll isn’t bombproof on both sides in all conditions, then it isn’t good enough. Ballast For best handling and quickest acceleration in big water, your kayak should be as lightly loaded as possible. Mick had placed a number of jugs of water in his day hatch, hoping to simulate an expedition load with water ballast, but it wasn’t working as he had intended, and his kayak was feeling fairly twitchy. The cargo may have been shifting slightly, which can definitely compromise stability, but in retrospect, Mick was simply too big for the boat. He has lots of upper body muscle and needed a higher volume kayak for the conditions in which we were paddling. He was tiring from handling the extra weight of the ballast, so we decided to dump the water out of the jugs. Accessing a day hatch in big water is a chore. Because kayaks tend to orient themselves parallel to waves, we had to use our paddles to keep faced into the waves while trying to get something out of the hatch and not letting much water in. We had packed our day compartments so the items we might need could be quickly accessed. It was proving to be enough of a struggle just keeping the boats together and stabilized during this operation. The boat with the open day hatch had to be kept almost level to avoid water just pouring into the hatch. Trying to access the day hatch solo would have certainly meant capsizing. Solo Rescues After several T-rescues and bow rescues, we decided it was time for some solo rescues. We tried cowboy reentries but soon realized that we had no chance of getting back aboard without recapsizing, so we abandoned the idea. We also skipped attempting a paddle-float reentry because even if we could have gotten the float and paddle set up properly, it was obviously going to be nearly impossible. We would have been especially vulnerable to capsizing again when trying to stow the float and remove the paddle from the back deck. The only solo self-rescue that was feasible was the reentry and roll. We both found it worked well, although being hit repeatedly by clapotis just made it a bit more awkward and required a bit of patience and determination. |
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