Kayak Rescues | Are you prepared for flipping your kayak?

Ken Whiting here with PaddleTV and in this video I'm going to talk about kayak rescues. And I'm going to set the stage here by showing you a segment from a video that I released a couple years ago. It's from a trip I did to Dominica in the Caribbean. When you go there you're not going there to just to hang on the beach. You're going there to explore a really dramatic terrain. Two years ago they established the Waitakabuli Sea Kayaking Trail. It's a 40 miles long, pretty much the whole western coast. It's divided into 14 different segments designed to really showcase the natural beauty of Dominica but while also offering really neat cultural experiences with the local communities. It was the brainchild of Wes and Carrie who are the Soufrière Outdoor Centre. They did it in partnership with Discover Dominica. I'm going to stop talking but I'm going to start showing. I'll show this video clip. It tells a bit more about them but it really shows this little adventure we did there that involved having to do an on-water rescue. And then I'll come back and I'm going to talk about kayak rescues. My name is Wes Moses and I'm the founder of the Soufrière Outdoor Centre. Soufrière Outdoor Centre is an ecotourism business and we specialize in sea kayaking and snorkeling. Wes and Carrie didn't just see it an opportunity to set up an outfitter business, to provide experiences for tourists, to see one of the most dramatic and fantastic places in the world. They really are doing this as well to involve the local community, to grow the local community, to help the community. We named the Soufrière Outdoor Centre after Soufrière because we really wanted to represent the community and involve the community. And to that end we've tried to make it as accessible. We didn't want this to be another ecotourism business or tourism business that was primarily for the tourists. I love the fact that Wes and Carrie are getting the local kids involved with paddling and teaching them to be the next generation of kayak guides here. And right out of the gate I could feel their energy, their love of not just the water but their discovery of kayaks as this vehicle to experience their backyard. Sea kayaks are different than sit-on-top kayaks. They're not designed to be super stable and hard to flip. They're designed for performance but the trade-off is that sea kayaks aren't that stable and if you're not paying attention you can find yourself upside down. Uh-oh. I'm not sure what Freddie was doing. The water wasn't that rough but that is the thing about sea kayaking. If you take your eye off the ball, it doesn't take too much to flip a sea kayak. You can hold on to my boat, yeah? Freddie swimming was actually a great thing to happen with everyone around because all those young paddlers got to see how Wes was going to deal with this, how Wes and Freddie were going to deal with the situation. And that's an important part of paddling in the sea is you have to know what to do in those types of situations because inevitably they are going to happen. You want to do it that way? All right. You good? Yeah. The really neat thing about Scottshead is it's like this wall and on our side of that wall is the Caribbean Sea and it's very sheltered. On the other side of that wall or that peninsula is the Atlantic. And so when you come around that corner, boom, all of a sudden you're in the Atlantic. The wind picks up, the waves pick up, everything picks up. Coming around Scottshead into the rougher Atlantic environment, it was interesting to see Freddie leading the charge right after he had just swum. For me, that was valuable insight into the kind of person Freddie is. He's game. He loves the water. He's comfortable in the water and he just wants to play out there. Paddling in the unprotected waters around Scottshead was really a cool experience for the young guys. For most of them, this is the biggest water they've ever seen. And experiencing that, that's not something you can safely do very often, but doing that with Wes, Kerry, and myself, having that experience there with them, it gave them the confidence to push themselves a little bit. And you could see it on their face. They were nervous. They were excited. They were just lapping it all up. So that was a super fun day. And I love the fact that Wes and Kerry go out of their way to make time to take the younger paddlers out and to really share their knowledge. You know, when I look back at my journey as a paddler, there have been many really cool people who went out of their way, in some cases to help really to teach me, to guide me, but there's others who just allowed me to join them on paddling adventures. And whether they knew it or not, they were teaching me because I was absorbing, I was watching and learning and absorbing all this information from them. I can't stress enough how important that is. And it's something that the experienced paddlers out there, you know, it's really valuable to make space for the less, for the keen, or not so keen, but less experienced paddlers to join and to learn from you. Before we dive right into Kayak Rescues, a quick note of thanks to the sponsor of this video, and that's Track Kayaks, which is very appropriate because that's the kayak that I was using in this video. Really cool, portable kayak. You might have, there's a good chance if you've watched my videos, you've seen me use it before because I've been using the Track Kayak for 20 years. And I've just loved it. It's a high performing sea kayak that fits into a golf bag. It goes beyond that too. The way it's built, I'll explain really quick because this is actually just neat. It's a skin on frame kayak. And so you build out these two pieces of frame and it's kind of like 10 poles in a way. And then they go inside the skin and then you have these jacks, hydraulic jacks that attach those two pieces of frame together. And then when you jack them, they push out into the skin and tighten everything up. Now, the really cool thing, the thing that caught my attention 20 years ago when I was first introduced to this boat, was one of those jacks is right on the floor on the bottom of the kayak along the center line, the keel of the kayak. As you stretch that boat and you jack it further out, well, eventually it gets to a point where it can't stretch out anymore. And so it actually starts bending. And so you get, you can control the rocker of the kayak. And the rocker is the curvature of the kayak when you look at it from the side. That is really cool because rocker is what dictates how maneuverable or how well tracking a kayak is. Now, the reason they're sponsoring this video is because they just launched a new website and they're celebrating the fact that track kayaks are now in stock, which is a big deal because they've struggled to get the materials they needed to make boats ever since COVID started. But the wait is now over and they gave me a code to share with you to get 10% off a track kayak. So check out the new website and check out the full review I did of the track kayak to see if it's the right boat for you. So let's talk kayak rescues. So as I mentioned in the video, it was really cool that Freddie decided to randomly flip and give us an opportunity to do an on-water rescue, an on-water re-entry for those younger paddlers to see. And actually for me to talk about right now with you. But here's an interesting question. What if Freddie couldn't get back into the kayak? What would have the options been? The water wasn't like crazy rough, but it was rough enough. It was a windy day and even though it was a protected bay, it was still rough water. We were well out from shore, probably a half mile from shore. If he couldn't get back in the boat, really the only option is to either tow him to shore a half mile and someone else tow his boat or he swims to shore while someone tows his boat. I mean, for him to swim his boat to shore a half mile? Regardless, towing somebody that far who's in the water is no joke. It takes real effort and Freddie, that's a very tiring thing to do. I mean, not everybody would be game for that. This pretty much explains the point at which you need professional instruction or a professional guide on hand. If you want to travel further from shore, then you can comfortably swim and a half mile is not a comfortable swim for sure for most mortals. If you're going to travel that far from shore, then you need to be absolutely confident in your ability to get back into the kayak from the water with the resources you have. When I say that, what I mean is with the people you're paddling with. They have to be able to help provide the help that you need to get back into that kayak. In order to have that security, you need to have really practiced and perfected the art of re-entering a kayak from the water. If you haven't and you're just guessing that you can do it, that's not good enough. If a you're not sure or you just you can't get back, you're not confident in your ability to get back into your kayak from the water, then you need to stay close enough to shore that you can comfortably swim. You should also stay in water that's protected from wind and waves to reduce the chances of flipping to begin with. Now something else you're going to need if you're going to travel further from shore than you can comfortably swim is a boat that has either bulkheads or airbags. Bulkheads are walls inside the kayak. There's usually one well there is one right behind the seat and there's one right in front of your feet and that separates the kayak into three compartments. And so if you flip, swim, have to you know pull your skirt and swim, only the center the cockpit area is going to fill with water. The other two compartments are going to hold air and this is really means your boat's going to float still very high. It makes the kayak so much easier to deal with. Makes it easier to tow to shore if you need to but it also makes it easier to re-enter and paddle to deal with once you get back into the boat. Now some kayaks don't have bulkheads like the track kayaks that we were using. They're portable kayaks. They don't have walls on the inside of them, waterproof walls. In those situations a good alternative is airbags. You need to fill the front section ahead of your feet with an airbag and or the the whole stern behind the seat with an airbag. And there are airbags specifically designed for doing that. And by doing that if you do end up swimming those airbags displace water and provide flotation just like a just like bulkheads do. Let's now talk about what rescues are best in a situation like the one that Freddy found himself in. The best rescue is the self-rescue that stops you from flipping. And you know maybe this is simplifying a bit but braces. Flipping usually happens when your head falls off to the side. If your head stays centered over the kayak then you're going to stay balanced. You can't flip your kayak if your head stays over the kayak. For whatever reason when your head falls to one side or the other that's when you can start flipping. Well braces involves using your paddle to stop that flipping momentum so that your knees and hips can right the kayak. You can pull the kayak back underneath your head and body so that you don't flip. Braces are one of the trickiest things to learn. Now you can learn the technique because technique is important. Good technique is important to learn with braces because with bad technique you can put real strain on your shoulders. Ultimately you could dislocate a shoulder if you do it really wrong. But the tricky thing about braces is that if you have to think about doing one then 99% of the time it's too late. You've already flipped. And for that reason actually in kind of a story about how I when I learned to kayak I knew the bracing. I was taught how to brace and I knew the bracing technique. I was also taught how to roll. I was learning how whitewater kayak and I picked up my roll really quick. And for the first while when I was on the river I would start to flip. I wouldn't brace. I wouldn't even think about bracing. And I loved my roll. The roll was cool. And so I just let myself flip and set up for the roll and roll back up and be like yeah. And I did that for quite a while until you know finally I was just kind of sick of rolling and it wasn't allowing me to do the things that I wanted to do on the river. And I'll never forget the moment where I was playing around in this wave called S-turn and I started to flip. And I thought about setting up for a roll before I was even upside down and then I said no I'm going to brace. I don't want to flip. And I braced. All of a sudden that the light went on and and I from that point on I flipped way less. My braces became ultra strong and having a strong brace now I look at the roll as being it's just it's a rescue technique when you've really messed up and missed your braces. So braces are the belt best self-rescue skill. If the brace fails well your next best kayak or self-rescue is the roll. Kayak rolls are amazing things. They're not for everybody. Some people will never they're just not comfortable with the idea of going upside down in a kayak. Don't want to have their head underwater. I totally get it. But you'd be surprised if you like kayaking. If you learn the kayak roll with a good instructor you'd be surprised how enjoyable how cool the it is to learn that skill. And when you do learn that skill how much confidence you get. How much more you're able to enjoy your time on the water because you know you have this this rescue technique in your back pocket that if hey things go wrong and I end up flipping for some reason I'm not just going to be swimming. Swimming if for me when you're out of your kayak for me that's one of the scariest times. Depends on the type of water you're in of course. But I don't like to be out of my kayak whatsoever. The roll provides gives me the confidence to know I'm the chances of me ending up in that situation are very low. The roll can be problematic at times when people take that too far. Sometimes people lean on the roll too much as a crutch as a get out of jail free card. And so they'll put them they'll push themselves too far. Put themselves in situations that they shouldn't because they have it in the back of their mind that hey things go wrong I'll just roll. A roll can't save you from every situation. I mean a roll is a recovery. When you're rolling you're not in control. The water is in control of you. You never know what can happen especially in rough conditions when you when you relinquish control like that. And so it's important to understand that the roll is a wonderful self-rescue skill that a lot of people more people could learn it than who know it right now and love the the process of learning it. But the roll is not something to lean on to allow you to go do things beyond your skill level. But the roll aside you know some people will have no interest in it or may not physically be able to do a roll and there's no problem with that. It doesn't mean you're you're highly limited as a paddler. It just means that you need to rely on if you want to travel further from shore then you can comfortably swim then you need to learn how to re-enter your kayak from the water. And there are lots of different ways to re-enter your kayak from the water. We're not going to go into all those details in this video but the biggest thing I wanted to communicate about re-entering your kayak from the water is that it's not easy. You need to practice it. You need to practice it a fair bit. You can't it's not one of those things I would just do once and be like okay I'm good. No you practice it so it becomes second nature because chances are when you need to use it in real world scenario there are some real conditions that put you in that position. Maybe it's a strong wind. Maybe it's waves. Maybe it's just rough in general and you want things to be you don't want to be figuring things out in those types of conditions. It's really important if you if you want to travel further from shore that you practice your re-entry techniques in a controlled environment so that you're very comfortable with it. Another tip about practicing re-entries is that you also need to practice being on the helping hand of on water re-entries because there are some tricks there too to be a good rescuer. Chances are in a real world scenario it's going to be rough conditions and so you need to be comfortable really stabilizing someone's you need to be comfortable helping to empty someone's kayak of the water if possible before they get in. People often overlook practicing being the rescuer but it really is almost or just as important to practice being the rescuer as being the one who's getting rescued. Now that's about all I'm going to say about on water re-entries. If you really want to if you want to learn bracing rolling or on water re-entries I mean I would highly recommend taking a sea kayaking course. The things you're going to learn in that course are going to make you a better paddler a safer paddler and let you enjoy the experience more and it's going to open the door to new types of paddling experiences. Another great resource is online sea kayaking. Oh yeah onlineseacayaking.com they have offer a online course and these two guys Simon and James who created this course have done a bang up job with this course. Highly experienced instructors but also they've they've filmed it so well they've created it's really well done. It's something that I would highly recommend any kayaker who wants to keep the education process going check out that course. I'll leave a link in the description box down below. But one last thing I want to talk about about rough water paddling and that segment that you just watched. After Freddie got back into his kayak we continued to paddle and it wasn't long before we reached the exposed water to the Atlantic Ocean and the water got a whole lot rougher. Freddie was one of the first paddlers to just charge out into significantly rougher water much rougher than what he had just flipped in and had to do and had to help you know get some help with an on water re-entry. Freddie got away with that or it was cool that Freddie did that because Wes Carey and I were there he knew that we were up to the task of helping him in those types of conditions and on top of that Freddie had proven on previous trips too that he was totally cool with swimming major distances. He took responsibility for rescuing himself in some rough water. It's something that everybody needs to consider when they're going into rough conditions is if something happens to them other people are going to need to come and help and are those other people up to the task. So it's not just about your skill level it's about the skill level of those of the people in your group and if you push things maybe you're not pushing things too far for you but if something does happen and you need help have you pushed yourself too far for the rest of the group? Are you now putting them in a terrible position of having to go out of their comfort zone into conditions they're not prepared for in order to help you? And so whenever you're paddling you have to make the decisions that respect not only your own skill level and experience but the skill and experience of your paddling group. Well I am going to stop talking about kayak rescues right there. Lots more we could talk about and it's a whole other can of worms diving into actual on water re-entry techniques not to mention the roll itself. I've done some videos about the kayak roll to check out and surprisingly some I've heard from people who've taught themselves how to roll a kayak just from watching those videos. Not something you should expect to do. It's still early in the season in many places paddling isn't an option right now but oftentimes there are rolling clinics happening in indoor pools. That's something to look for. The best way to find out what options are available to you is go to your local paddling store or outdoor store but if you have a local paddling store go to the paddling store because they'll know what's up what's happening and and what options there are. Thanks for watching. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Give it a tuned uh to both this channel and my new channel Ken Whiting Adventures. I haven't been on the water in seven months seven and a half months now and I'm dying to get on the water and I have a big big season of paddling planned ahead with lots of content coming out and so subscribe to this channel and to my other channel if you haven't already and we'll see you again soon for another paddling tip, gear review, or paddling adventure.