Sea Kayaker magazine has a lot of stories about kayakers being rescued by other mariners: Sometimes it’s by the Coast Guard, sometimes by working seamen or by pleasure boaters.
Occasionally the tables are turned and kayakers come to the rescue. I had the opportunity to do just that this summer on the Great Peconic Bay between the north and south forks of New York’s Long Island.
On Monday, August 9, 2011, my girlfriend Dara Fee, her 17-year-old nephew Ryan and I were enjoying a late afternoon outing on the Great Peconic Bay. It was the first time Ryan had been kayaking. He was in Dara’s P&H Delphin, Dara was in her Lincoln Canoe and Kayak Schoodic and I was in my Tahe Marine Greenland-T. We had paddled out of Red Creek Pond in Hampton Bays to Red Cedar Point and were on our way back. It was a short outing, less than three miles.
Dara and I are both American Canoe Association (ACA) Level-3 coastal kayakers. We are also ACA-certified trip leaders. I lead numerous trips each year for North Atlantic Canoe and Kayak, a kayak club that both Dara and I belong to. We are also members of QAJAQ USA, the Greenland-style kayaking community in the United States. We have circumnavigated Manhattan Island and kayaked most bays on Long Island and Long Island Sound and have explored stretches of the Maine coast.
While I’m paddling, I always carry a VHF radio and keep it secured to my PFD. I always take visual sound signaling devices, a paddle float, pump, first aid kit and a tow belt. Dara carries the same equipment that I do. We carry food and water appropriate to the length of the outing. If I am kayaking with Dara or other experienced kayakers I usually stow my tow belt along with my first aid kit in my day hatch. I wore the tow belt on our August 9th outing because we were paddling with Ryan, a novice kayaker.
We were nearly halfway back to Red Pond when a white sailboat about 27 feet long passed in front of us about 35-yards ahead of us. There are a lot of boats sailing Great Peconic Bay so this is not an uncommon occurrence, but this sailboat had a man trailing behind it being dragged through the water at the end of a line.
No one was visible aboard the boat and only the jib was set. The boat was moving fast enough that the man in the water was only hanging on, not pulling himself toward the boat. Dara and I, without speaking or even glancing at one another, started to paddle after the sailboat with Ryan following. After my start to pursue the sailboat, I hesitated, believing that I heard a faint yell of “Help” off to my left.
I looked in that direction but I didn’t see anyone in the water. I paddled after the sailboat again but I couldn’t shake a nagging feeling about the faint cry that I thought I’d heard. I once more turned my kayak to the left. It was clear that Dara would catch the sailboat and I knew she could render whatever assistance was needed to the individual being dragged behind it.
Ryan was paddling after Dara and I was confident that if Dara needed Ryan’s assistance in helping with the sailboat she would instruct him what to do. I’d watched Ryan paddling on our way to Red Cedar Point and I was confident that he wouldn’t capsize in the small 18-inch swells. Besides, Ryan was wearing a PFD and even if he did capsize I knew he would follow the instructions that Dara had given him before we set out: Hold on to the kayak to be more visible in the water, then wait for us to get him back into his kayak.
After paddling about twenty-five yards, doubt started to set in: Did I really hear a cry for help? Could that cry have come from the man being dragged behind the sailboat? Was I wasting time traveling in this direction when I should be trying to catch up to the sailboat? Just when I was about to change direction and continue chasing the sailboat and the man tethered to it, I noticed a hand with outstretched fingers emerge from the water about 15 or 20 yards away.
Then, as if it had been a mirage, the hand was gone.
I glanced back over my shoulder and could see Dara now off in the distance rapidly gaining on the sailboat with Ryan not far behind her. I slowed down and continued paddling toward the spot where I had seen the specter of a hand emerge from the water. It didn’t reappear. I continued to paddle, but didn’t see anyone in the water.
Then, directly in front of my bow, just below the water’s surface inside a small swell, I was startled to notice a pair of eyes. The swell had brought the eyes almost up to my kayak’s bow level just a few feet in front of me. The eyes seemed the size of golf balls.
Emerging from the water once more was the hand, reaching for my bow. I applied some reverse strokes before the hand grasped my bow. I wanted to stop my kayak before the man could do anything in panic that might capsize me. With just his fingertips griping my bow, a head now emerged from the water and with it came the sound of a gasp for air.
As I paddled backward I said, “Don’t grab my boat; I will tell you what to do!” I didn’t want to risk capsizing by having him pull himself along my kayak’s grab lines toward me. The man nodded and I stopped back-paddling.
I instructed him to place his other hand on my bow and interlock his fingers. Once he had done this, I told him to let me know when he had caught his breath. When he once more nodded his head, I had him wrap his legs around the bow of my kayak and place his feet around the foredeck.
The man on my bow seemed to be in his 50s, shirtless, tanned, heavyset but not overweight, black hair, dark eyes and barefoot. He appeared extremely calm while secured to my bow.
I hadn’t done this swimmer rescue with the Greenland-T, but I had practiced the technique with my other kayaks. It is my preferred method for transporting a swimmer: I can see the individual attached to my bow and assess their condition as I paddle.
I have no problem paddling distances with someone attached to my bow and I don’t feel unstable. As it turned out, the Greenland-T is very well suited for this rescue technique. Its long tapered bow allows the swimmer to nestle right under the bow. He had no problem wrapping both his arms and legs around the kayak’s narrow bow. With water temperature in the 70s (21 ° C) this time a year, I didn’t have to concern myself with the swimmer quickly becoming hypothermic.
The Greenland-T has very little freeboard and if I had tried to carry him on the rear deck he would have submerged the stern of the Greenland-T and made it unstable. With him now secured to my kayak’s bow I started to pursue the sailboat, which appeared to have come to a stop.
My passenger, now that his life was no longer in jeopardy, regained his composure and was breathing normally. I have never been thanked so often and in that short a time span as when this man was clinging to my kayak’s bow. He turned his concern to the sailboat, which was being carried by the wind toward a rocky shore.
It only took me a few minutes to paddle the approximately 100 yards to reach the sailboat. When I arrived, Dara was at its bow and the man who previously was being dragged by the sailboat was now standing in waist-deep water, holding the line he’d been dragged by to keep the sailboat from running aground on the rocky north shore of Hampton Bays.
The man on my bow, his shorts hanging around his knees, waded over to the sailboat and pulled an anchor out of the water and put it on deck. The anchor was overboard and may have helped stop the boat as it drifted into the shallows near shore. There was no chain attached to the anchor, just a short line. The man I’d rescued climbed onto the sailboat’s stern. With all modesty forgotten and no attempt at pulling up his shorts, he started the small outboard engine.
Now with both men aboard, shorts up and engine running, they moved the sailboat away from shore while continuing to thank us. We didn’t get their names or even take note of the name of the boat.
Dara and I, in the brief conversations we had with the sailors, put together the circumstances leading up to this incident. The two men were sailing on the Great Peconic Bay and decided to anchor near the exposed sandbar off Red Cedar Point. They dropped the anchor but left the small jib up.
There was no chain affixed to the anchor: it was just tied to a short length of nylon rope. Without the chain to weight the anchor line, the anchor couldn’t get a purchase on the sandy bottom. The line looked taut as if it were holding, but the boat was drifting slowly backward.
The man I had rescued hadn’t noticed the boat had moved into deeper water and jumped off the sailboat believing it was still in the shallows surrounding the sandbar. He found himself in water over his head. He was not wearing a PFD and he couldn’t swim. His companion, noticing the plight of his friend, secured a rope around his own waist and jumped into the water in an attempt to rescue him.
The wind and current quickly separated the two. With just the jib set, the sailboat would swing around on a downwind course and pick up speed. Soon it was moving enough that the man tethered to it could not pull himself along the rope to get back aboard. Within a few minutes the wind and current pushed the sailboat and the tethered sailor across our path.
I marvel at all the circumstances that fell into place to allow us to rescue these two men: Dara didn’t have her normal work assignment and was able to leave work early; we’d picked that precise location and time to paddle; the direction of the wind and current carried the men right across our path; the nagging feeling I’d experienced that I’d heard a weak cry for help; looking in the right direction and noticing a hand emerging briefly from the water. We were very fortunate to be in a position to help the two sailors.
This was the second time I’ve been able to help someone while I was out kayaking. Two years ago two teenage boys capsized a one-person sit-on-top kayak in Noyak Bay, 12 miles to the northwest.
I got one of the boys back into the sit-on-top and towed the other back to shore with my kayak. I did not really think much of that incident. I’d spent three years as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne in the 1970s and almost 30 years in law enforcement, so this was not my first incident helping someone. I did not think much of helping the boys out of a bind, but it was quite a different experience to see a man’s hand reach out from beneath the waters of Great Peconic Bay.
Lessons Learned
It’s good to see that kayaks are not always on the receiving end of a rescue. There is a long-standing tradition of assisting mariners in distress: “Every master is bound, so far as he can do so without serious danger to his vessel and persons thereon, to render assistance to any person in danger of being lost at sea.”
There is also an obligation to keep watch while operating a vessel, not only to assure its safe navigation, but also to respond to emergencies. The custom of assisting others is a central part of the maritime culture for one simple reason: On water we are out of our element and without a sound vessel to carry us our survival time is limited.
Kayaks may be small, but we are all mariners nonetheless. The diminutive size of vessels may limit what we can do to assist others, but being alert to what goes on around us and prepared to take action can put us in a position to save lives.
The degree to which we prepare to go paddling usually increases the farther we are from home and the more isolated our destination. It makes good sense to be quite self-sufficient when help in an emergency would be, at best, hours in reaching us.
But closer to home, while we may feel a greater margin of safety for ourselves, the likelihood of encountering other boaters in distress is much higher. Great Peconic Bay, where Colin, Dara and Ryan crossed paths with the errant sailboat, is rimmed with piers and marinas.
Just as most auto accidents occur within 25 miles of home, it’s reasonable to expect that most boating accidents will happen in close proximity to the places boats are moored or launched.
The waters within view of the Sea Kayaker offices are a good example of an urban waterway. At the center of Shilshole Bay is a marina with 1,400 slips. To the south of the marina is a beach popular with stand-up paddlers and a canal leading to locks that lead to inland waters. About 65,000 boats pass through the locks each year.
To the north of the marina is a four-lane launching ramp used by more than 10,000 boats per year and a popular beach frequented by kayakers and kite-boarders. The vast majority of boaters pass through these busy waters without incident, but a few get into trouble. Rob Casey paddles this area often and reports:
“I rescued two kite-surfers in 25-plus-knot winds and waves reaching 4 feet. I carried one on my deck back to shore. A fisherman who’d stood up to pee and flipped his boat.
When we found him he was trying to swim his boat to shore even though it was anchored by a 16-pound downrigger weight. I gave him clothes to warm him until the paramedics arrived. I used a flare to direct the police boat to the site. A teenage kayaker in a boating channel in sight of a waterfront restaurant on a busy summer day had been capsized from boat wake. He was wearing only shorts and had been in the water 20 minutes.
My partner and I got him back aboard with a T-rescue and gave him clothes to wear. He was getting pretty stiff. This past summer I towed a stand-up paddler back to his put-in. He hadn’t been able to paddle back into a headwind. I gave him my tow rope to hold on to while he sat on the board.”
In this same area I’ve pulled two sailors out of the water while sailing and have towed a disabled fishing skiff behind my kayak.
We can’t expect that other boaters will respond to people in distress. A couple of years ago I was walking along the beach and noticed a kite-boarder about 50 yards offshore.
His kite had landed in the water and he appeared to have lost his board. He was struggling with a tangle of kite lines and it was clear he wasn’t going to be able to get himself to shore. I kept an eye on him for about 10 minutes, fully expecting that someone in the steady stream of power who was passing by him on their way in and out of the marina would stop for him. Not one did. I had just asked a person on the beach for a cell phone to call 911 when a pair of kayakers came to the kite-boarder’s aid.
They had seen the downed kite, recognized the distress and did something about it. They gave him a bow to hang on to and intercepted a powerboat to bring the man ashore. He was quite chilled but otherwise OK. His board was later recovered about a half mile away.
The kite-boarder’s sail in the water was clearly visible, if not an obvious sign of trouble. The signs are not always so easy to detect, like the faint cry that Colin merely thought he’d heard and could have passed without notice.
For the two sailors that I’d pulled out of the water, there was literally nothing to see or hear. I had looked astern just to keep track of the other boats in my area. I’d been keeping a mental note of traffic nearby so I knew that one boat was missing. I turned around and headed to where I thought they might be and eventually caught sight of the slim profile of an upturned hull.
Colin did well to pay attention to the sense he had heard something when the sight of the sailboat dragging a sailor was so obvious and could have narrowed his focus. He could easily have missed the person in the water—“PIW” in Coast Guard jargon.
A drowning person can be very easy to miss. We commonly associate drowning with crying out and thrashing in the water, a behavior referred to as aquatic distress. That can be true in some cases, but the signs of drowning can actually be quite subtle.
Mario Vittone and Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D, describe what they call the instinctive drowning response, or IDR. There is also an article on cold-water immersion on the previous page of this issue of the U.S. Coast Guard’s magazine On Scene.) In the IDR, drowning people cannot speak or shout—their efforts are exclusively occupied with breathing. Their mouths will rise briefly above the water, and upon exhalation submerge again with a quick inhalation.
They will not raise their arms or reach out because they’re pressing down in an effort to get their mouths above the water. They float vertically and don’t kick to support themselves.
Colin approached the PIW with caution, knowing that a person in aquatic distress can be unpredictable and put a rescuer in danger. Emergencies necessarily create a sense of urgency, but it is important not to act too hastily. You can’t be an effective rescuer if you make yourself part of the problem. Fortunately Colin reached the swimmer in time and the swimmer was able to grab his bow. As Colin discovered, people exhibiting the IDR typically relax when rescued.
The water wasn’t dangerously cold, so hypothermia wasn’t an immediate risk. Colin could afford to keep the swimmer in the water and wrapped around his bow while he paddled toward shore and the sailboat. In cold water, swimmers can be transported on deck to delay the onset of hypothermia (See “Back Deck Swimmer Rescue,” Swimmer Rescue Transport,”).
Rescue practice is often directed at getting kayakers back in their kayaks. To prepare for coming to the assistance of other boaters, practice should include assisting a boatless PIW.
If you are paddling with a group, a pair of kayaks can be rafted up to provide a stable platform to get a PIW on deck. Additional kayaks can tow the raft to safety. If your easily accessible emergency gear includes a space blanket, the PIW can be protected from the cold. (Our Off the Water tip in this issue, page 48, recommends carrying a silicone swim cap for such emergencies.)
Colin had a VHF radio and could have summoned the assistance of a larger vessel if that had been required. In a life-threatening emergency, a Mayday call can bring other vessels in the area to assist and enlist the services of the Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard can coordinate or assist in the rescue and prepare land-based emergency medical services to receive the rescued person. With handheld submersible VHF radios now available at under $100, there is little reason not to have one.
Most of the paddling sea kayakers do is very much like the summer afternoon outing that Colin, Dara and Ryan embarked upon. The benign conditions they paddled in were just what bring other boaters out in numbers.
Those times where we may feel least at risk may present us with situations where we can be of great service to othersperhaps even save a life—if we are well prepared and equipped.