Knowing Your Limits

[surferman]

A guy almost drowned up in the raritan bay may 4 last sunday. He was in a sit in kayak and wasn't wearing a wetsuit. Be careful out there gents!

From Facebook -
Wow what a day! No fish but did rescue my friend who flipped his kayak.

I didn't think much of the situation until he couldn't get back in his kayak and we where over 3/4 of a mile out. So he hung off the back of my trolling motor while i paddled as hard as I could for 35 minutes with the motor running also with the blades hitting legs a few times.

My other friend followed close by in case he let go and then told me about the 50 50 50 rule means he didn't have much time left. 50 degrees water for 50 minutes you have a 50% chance of living. When we beached he couldnt feel anything and he thought he tore his triceps from the hypothermia and his muscles contracting...

How cold was he? So cold he couldn't get his clothes off or use his hand's so we stripped him down and then I took off my clothes for him...

This isn't a story so I can be congratulated because I did nothing different from what anyone else would have done. This is about being safe, prepared and always ready for the worst. Always have a radio, always fish with a partner, and always wear your pfd because he would have been dead.

Also tell your wives or girlfriends to go buy you a dry suit Lol... Stay safe,a life can be lost at anytime in any situation if you aren't prepared. Thank god I had a motor."

[storminsteve]

Wow sounds crazy. He is certainly lucky to be alive. Def should have been wearing a wetsuit. Glad he is OK

[Monty]

I read that and a thread on it, was amazed that the coast guard was never contacted during the ordeal.
Way to many risks being taken by kayakers. An amazing amount, their luck will run out.

[J Barbosa]

Launching out front in fog is a definite DON'T!!! Just asking to be run over by a boat IMO.

With the price of radar coming down many boaters are buying them. The problem is kayaks don't show up well on radar. Add to this that some boaters are now running too fast in the fog due to the false sense of confidence in the radar.

An article I found from 2008:

A few seasons ago, one the large sea kayaking clubs in New England organized a series of radar tests with the Coast Guard's search and rescue station at Newburyport, Massachusetts.

It was a miserably wet day with torrential rains. The results of the radar testing on sea kayaks were equally miserable: the radar watchstanders reported they were unable to distinguish nearby kayakers from the chaff and clutter of day-to-day interference, waves and rain on their screens.

It was a sobering visit, especially for sea kayaking enthusiasts who frequent the fogbound waters of downeast Maine. Maine's remote waters often buss with the dodging, circling and busy at work lobstermen whose radar alarms are sometimes all that prevent them from colliding with others.
The same types of tests were later run again on a more formal systematic basis by the Coast Guard, local Maine lobstermen, and researchers from the Maine Sea Grant at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Their report, available as a pdf, takes time to wade through, given the report's thoroughness. In a nutshell, on open water and in fog, don't count on being detected in a sea kayak by radar no matter how much tin foil you fold up inside your hat or how fancy the reflector you attach to your aft deck.

One option, despite sometimes misinformed discussions dismissive of VHF radios, is to make a vhf calls on VHF channel 16 if you are in your sea kayak fog, at night or in limited visibility due to big swell, heavy whitecaps, darkness, heavy rain.

Of the recent tests in Maine, one adaptation of tin foil and a hat sort of worked: a tinfoil-covered sunhat. The rig gave to the radar readers a better response rate than any of the available commercial radar reflectors made for kayaks, and was certainly much less cumbersome and unwieldy, and less likely to interfered with rolling a kayak or rescuing a kayaker than an aft deck radar reflector.

[seamonkey]

^^^^ Tin foil -Amazing that it would work. Very basic and home remedy style. Thanks for sharing.

[storminsteve]

Heads up coast guard warning about cold water.
http://www.moremonmouthmusings.net/2...water-is-cold/