Yesterday I met up with a couple of people to practice dealing with unruly participants, rescues (assisting a swimmer and self-rescuing with a paddle float) and a bit of towing. We did it locally on Centennial Lake.
The water was pretty chilly; I didn't have a temperature measuring device, so I have to use how the water felt. My guess based on my 2 (intentional!) immersions was that it was probably near 55 degrees. It was cold enough that on my first immersion, it had me breathing quickly and shivering slightly. It took a l-o-n-g time to get my breathing under control and shivering stopped - well ok, it might have just been a minute or two. But, it felt like forever! Strangely, the second immersion - I didn't have nearly the same issues as the first. It's possible that I just wasn't thinking of it as much - on the first, I was being rescued and on the second, I was actively doing a paddle-float reentry. I chose to wear my 3mm farmer john wet suit. I was thankful for it!
We didn't paddle far - just across the face of the dam. On a side note, the water looks so foreign without the water lilies. By the middle of summer, they have a good 20 to 30 feet area covered.
Jen was playing the instructor first. She had to rescue a tandem that has no flotation in the bow. It's quite interesting watching and thinking about how much you think you know. First, I was able to armchair QB the variety of things she was doing "wrong". Then, I was able to armchair QB the variety of things that I thought the co-instructor should be doing. I found out on my turn that reality dictated some of the things she had to do. The biggest - without bow flotation, the tandem's bow started to sink (because the assessor specifically lifted the stern to squeeze out the pocket of air it held). I didn't think it was far and didn't understand why she didn't start lifting the bow. It would have caused the water to slosh back to the cockpit area and would have made life easier with trying to get the boat out of the water -- with pulling it stern first, she was dragging the water-filled bow through the water and water is heavy. I figured it was because she happened to approach the boat at the stern and simply started on the end that she was closest to. However, once it was my turn - I intentionally approached the bow first and found that there was no water to get to it under 6 or 8 inches of water. She was right, my armchair QB'ing was wrong.
The co-instructor explained to us that we could edge our kayaks to get it under the capsized boat and then lift our knee to rotate/rock the boat and give us better leverage. I found that it took some of the brute force work out of getting the tandem into the X configuration for emptying. Once it was out of the water, it emptied remarkably well and required little to no pumping at the end.
Jen then had to tow and then rescue me (in a rec. boat - a Pungo 140). This went pretty well once I got over the cold water.
After she rescued me, we switched roles; I got into the instructor boat and she got into a rec. boat to play the unruly participant. As I mentioned before, I was definitely schooled in my armchair quarterbacking - rescuing the tandem was as hard as it looks. Being a guy and having more upper-body strength helped. But, it was still pretty challenging. We didn't have any victims/swimmers for our scenarios. I was working through in my head what I would do with them, how I would manage them - dealing with a single is tricky enough.
After rescuing the tandem, she capsized so that I could rescue her. My biggest comments to this are that you need to be very concise with the swimmer, letting them know what the plan is and what you need them to do. Oh and - don't hit them in the head on your approach! I had one moment of distraction and came way to close to hitting Jen. The rescue after that was pretty uneventful.
The final task was to perform a self-rescue using a paddle-float reentry. This went alright as I made it back into the boat. BUT- I have a habit of flipping the boat over before I'm setup with the padde-float on the paddle blade. This means that I had to either re-capsize the boat OR try to hold onto it and manage the paddle-float. I made the mistake a year ago of trying to hold onto the boat and manage the paddle-float; long-story short, the boat got away from me and it was a feverish swim to try and catch up to it. Not fun and pretty embarrassing. So- I picked the re-capsize the boat option. After I swam onto the boat and started to cork-screw into the cockpit, I had one uneasy moment when I leaned away from the paddle-float. I didn't go over, but I went far enough that it warranted a compound cuss-word and a dive back onto the paddle/paddle-float. And finally, the seat back on Tsunami boats S-U-C-K. They're just too high. I don't know of anyone who is able to climb back in without flipping the seat down and ending up sitting on it. You're then required to slide to the very front of the cockpit (if you're small enough - I'm not) OR raise your booty so high to make yourself unstable again. If you own a Tsunami and are going to rely on paddle-float reentries, do yourself a favor and swap the seat back out! I tried to empty the kayak by myself, but I failed at both attempts.
It was a good day.
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