Near Disaster Off Trial Island
This is the kind of thing that is so upsetting to me; how people take such unnecessary risks on the water, and the ignorant behaviour of too many boaters who's horsepower exceeds by many factors their sense or decency.
12 kayakers were crossing between trial island and oak bay when they were swamped by a stinkpot's wave. 5 of them ended up in the water. of course the stinkpotter never noticed (they never do, do they?). In a situation like this there should be charges as 5 people could have lost their lives because of the inattention and carelessness of that skipper. I wonder if he even saw them; I guess we should be lucky that he didn't cut them down. They were in the water for an hour before the Trial Island lighthouse keeper spotted them and called the coast guard.
The other issue is what were these kayakers doing there in the first place? It's a particularily dangerous area -Enterprise Channel - and even in a 17,000 lb 36' boat I enter it cautiously. You can get very strong rips, currents and boils in there. Maybe they tried crossing in slack water, but what were they gonna do after they got across, poke around and explore? And after that? According to the news reports they weren't very experienced. Of course learning how to use any watercraft requires taking some risks (this is how we develop experience after all), and especially so for fragile craft like kayaks.
But it sounds like that was a pretty big leap for this group, especially as they didn't seem to know how to do an in-the-water recovery. I've taken courses and you should be able to get back into your kayak after a dump, especially when there are 7 others still in boats to help. Yet these people bobbed around in that freezing water for an hour. Worst of all nobody seemed to have a portable waterproof VHF with them. You can pick these up for less than 75 bucks these days! It would have allowed them to call for help instead of waiting for someone to notice them.
We almost had 5 deaths off the waterfront this weekend, and it could have been prevented by a more careful stinkpot skipper and better planning by these kayakers. It almost seems like people forget to respect the sea anymore, seeing it as just one more novel playground.
On another note, this is exactly why decommisioning and automation of lighthouses is such a bad idea. These lives were likely saved because we had eyes on Trial Island. How many other souls are still with us because of these men and women watching out for us in their lonely redoubts? Three cheers for the Trial Island lightkeeper.
12 kayakers were crossing between trial island and oak bay when they were swamped by a stinkpot's wave. 5 of them ended up in the water. of course the stinkpotter never noticed (they never do, do they?). In a situation like this there should be charges as 5 people could have lost their lives because of the inattention and carelessness of that skipper. I wonder if he even saw them; I guess we should be lucky that he didn't cut them down. They were in the water for an hour before the Trial Island lighthouse keeper spotted them and called the coast guard.
The other issue is what were these kayakers doing there in the first place? It's a particularily dangerous area -Enterprise Channel - and even in a 17,000 lb 36' boat I enter it cautiously. You can get very strong rips, currents and boils in there. Maybe they tried crossing in slack water, but what were they gonna do after they got across, poke around and explore? And after that? According to the news reports they weren't very experienced. Of course learning how to use any watercraft requires taking some risks (this is how we develop experience after all), and especially so for fragile craft like kayaks.
But it sounds like that was a pretty big leap for this group, especially as they didn't seem to know how to do an in-the-water recovery. I've taken courses and you should be able to get back into your kayak after a dump, especially when there are 7 others still in boats to help. Yet these people bobbed around in that freezing water for an hour. Worst of all nobody seemed to have a portable waterproof VHF with them. You can pick these up for less than 75 bucks these days! It would have allowed them to call for help instead of waiting for someone to notice them.
We almost had 5 deaths off the waterfront this weekend, and it could have been prevented by a more careful stinkpot skipper and better planning by these kayakers. It almost seems like people forget to respect the sea anymore, seeing it as just one more novel playground.
On another note, this is exactly why decommisioning and automation of lighthouses is such a bad idea. These lives were likely saved because we had eyes on Trial Island. How many other souls are still with us because of these men and women watching out for us in their lonely redoubts? Three cheers for the Trial Island lightkeeper.
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