CHAPTER 1

Trust Your Skills, Not Your Kayak

George Gronseth

This story should serve as a wake-up call for individuals who believe they cansea kayak safely without practicing rescues or testing their skills andequipment. As these paddlers learned the hard way, a stable kayak can create adangerous false sense of security. No matter how stable a kayak feels in calmwater, when conditions are rough only the paddler's skill can keep a kayak fromcapsizing. And getting back into a swamped kayak that is rolling in waves is notas easy as the uninitiated may think.

It was a partly cloudy but otherwise nice spring day when Ralph and his friendChris began paddling. The air temperature was around 60°F, unusually warm forthe U.S. Northwest in early April. They planned to do a short day trip fromGreenbank, on Washington's Whidbey Island, to Baby Island and back. The wind wasblowing out of the south at about 10 to 15 knots. Saratoga Passage, which wasjust east of their route, looked a bit rough, but inside the entrance to HolmesHarbor, the south wind had a shorter fetch so the waves were somewhat smaller."We were a little concerned about the conditions," Ralph said later, "but wethought we'd go out a ways and see how things were. If it was too rough, we'dturn around."

The two men were using Ralph's Eddyline San Juan (a three-cockpit kayak that isoften used as a double, with cargo stowed in the center cockpit). The kayak wasequipped with front and rear bulkheads for buoyancy. A cut-off plastic bleachbottle served as a bailing device, but they had no bilge pumps or otheremergency gear. Ralph had been sea kayaking for about a year; his friend hadsome canoeing experience but had done only a little kayaking. Neither of themhad taken lessons or practiced reentries.

Around noon they launched from a beach a little north of Greenbank. They angledtheir kayak into the wind and paddled for an hour to reach Baby Island. Thewaves were about 2 feet high, but since they were angling into them, thecrossing went well. They then rested for a half hour before heading back, duringwhich time conditions became a bit rougher. Even worse, if they headed straightback to where they started, the waves would be hitting them nearly broadside, sothey decided to zigzag in order to minimize the time spent sideways to thewaves. In retrospect, Ralph said, "Neither of us was really too worried. I thinkI had a false sense of how stable my boat was. I never had any concept that thething could ever tip over. It just felt like such a solid boat."

For the first part of the return crossing, they angled upwind and did OK, but onthe downwind leg the kayak began to surf in the quartering seas. Ralphremembered, "Some of the waves lifted us up so much that the rudder wasn'ttotally in the water." Near the middle of the crossing, the kayak broached(turned sideways to a wave) and started to capsize. "It tipped us over veryslowly," Ralph said, "like it happened in slow motion."

Both men exited the kayak and held onto it and their paddles. In Ralph's words,"Neither of us was too panicky. I mean, we went about things in a very calm way,partly because we didn't think we were that far offshore—even though it wasactually about a mile to shore in either direction. We thought we could just tipthe boat up and get in it. We didn't realize how difficult it was going to be."Fortunately, both men were in good shape. Ralph was a former competitive swimmerwith experience in ocean swim races.

The two paddlers used teamwork to push the kayak up and right it, similar to howthat is done with an open canoe. Next, Chris steadied the kayak while Ralphclimbed back into the rear cockpit. This went well, but when Chris attempted toclimb in, the kayak flipped again. Over the next 15 minutes, they capsized aboutten times while trying to reenter the kayak. Getting the first person in waseasy, but because they lacked bracing skills, neither was able to steady thekayak...