When Sea Kayakers are Rescued at Sea

Two sea kayakers who were basketlifted off Massachusetts by a Coast Guard helicopter and Cape Cod Air Station rescue swimmer Derrick Bretton wrote a widely-distributed report on their experience.

Kayakers not familiar with the case area (the mouths of two large tidal rivers facing an open bay) may have a hard time wading through the many localized details.

The rescue required numerous Coast Guard resources, including surfboats. Two smaller surfboats couldn't reach the kayakers due to the rough conditions at the mouths of the adjacent tidal rivers, the Annisquam (Gloucester, Massachusetts) and the Merrimack (Newburyport, Ma.).

Keys to the rescue were skilled rescue personnel, well-prepared kayakers, decklines, two VHF radios, flare kits, drysuits, and fleece clothing. Water temps were in the low fifties; when the two paddlers were landed at a nearby airport and as required transported to a nearby hospital, their body temps were a couple of degrees below normal.

(One ubiquitous brick-and-mortar North American source for the flares and vhf radios the two padders were carrying is West Marine.)

A couple of details about their report (broken up into five parts below) stand out.

One is the ongoing Coast Guard log comment that the two kayakers' radio transmissions were weak and garbled, a result of the paddlers' repeated immersion by breaking waves and by, in the heat of the moment, the pair's neglecting to switch their radios' output to full wattage.


Above: long by web standards (eight minutes), the video above shows Coast Guard rescue swimmers/mechanics at work. Be patient and watch as the first rescue swimmer kicks and scrambles beneath the crest of a huge, fast-moving breaking wave. The same type of rescue basket was used to pluck from the water the two kayakers whose trip report you'll find excerpts of in the several posts below.

Also noteworthy are that the pair used a pan-pan rather than a mayday vhf radio call.

Perhaps most important was that decklines made it possible for the two to stay together, visible, and accessible. Without decklines the pair would have been unable to hold onto the one kayak conditions had reduced them to. Holding the bow toggle proved impossible.

Finally, without flares, the use of ranges (the visual intersection of two landmarks), and two radios rather than one, the rescue would likely have taken much longer. Flares helped the local harbormaster pinpoint the paddlers' location which he radioed to the Coast Guard. And the second radio (though stored in a day hatch) proved crucial, as the initial radio's batteries drained and failed.

For info on relevant safety equipment such as decklines, reflective decklines for better night-time visibility, and the usefulness of SOLAS retroreflective tape on paddle blades and the fore and aft gunwales of a kayak, check these Sea Kayaking Dot Net links:
decklines
reflective decklines
retroreflective tape
Above: Coast Guard rescue swimmers practice hoists with a lift basket in turbulent conditions enlivened by rotor wash. Note the swimmers' collar pfds which keep their faces out of the water if they are knocked unconsiousious), masks, snorkels, helmets, and their drysuits' array of SOLAS retroreflective tape.

Copyright 2008 Just another guy named Dave
Photos courtesy United States Coast Guard