Once the tide started to run (current actually) conditions where near perfect for rescue practice. Waves in the channel were mostly about 3 feet with occasional 4 feet and very chaotic as usual. The channel looked very much like an active tide rip, which is basically what it is. There was rough water rolling practice, assisted reentries and reenter rolls. I didn't see anyone try any kind of paddle float reentry, but early in the practice Duane managed a cowboy reentry in the channel. It wasn't the roughest part of the day at all, but much rougher than I thought a cowboy would work.

Don showed me a new T rescue last week in which once the boat is pulled across the rescuers deck to empty it, it is never put back in the water. It is flipped upright with the stern in the water. The swimmer climbs aboard and buttons up the spray skirt and then slides the boat back into the water. It's easy to reenter the boat because the stern is buried and it keeps the cockpit dry until the spray skirt is buttoned up. He showed me this last week in calm water. It was interesting, but at that time I really felt it was more of a parlor trick than a real rough water rescue. It worked great in the channel - better that any of the more standard rescues I tried today. Very stable. I'll be practicing this more to see what the limitations are. I think all of us got a lot out of the practice. There were loose paddles, loose boats, paddlers flipping over when maneuvering for a rescue. A relative mark of success was getting the swimmer back in the boat before the boat was flushed out of the channel. Sometimes that happened, sometimes it didn't. Often things didn't work exactly right the first time, but everyone managed to get back in their boats and have fun. It was a practice done in real world conditions that are likely (and did) to actually cause capsizing. Challenging, but in a relatively controlled and safe environment.

One note on the timing: Generally the surfing in the channel starts at about 2 hours after high tide and 2 hours after that the waves are starting to get pretty trashy. For sea kayak rescues the trashy waves are more of a challenge than the clean ones, and sea kayaks have the speed to paddle up the channel against the faster current later in the day. It's probably more ideal to start rescue practice about 4 hours after high tide. This should minimize, if not eliminate overlap between kayak surfing and rescue practice and allow those of use who like both to do both.

This is definitely a spot we'll be using for rescues in the future.

Steve Brown