I mentioned in my last post that a bunch of folks in my club went around Pt. Pinos. One thing occurred that illustrates, I think, one of the difficulties of paddling in a group of peers.
On the way back one of the paddlers decided to go inside. To be sure he asked if it would be alright so huge props for that. It wasn't a big day out by any means but still the coast is the coast and waves big enough to cause a serious hurt were breaking. I wasn't the trip leader but I did say something like, "I'm not sure I can get in to help you if something goes wrong", which was mostly true. I mean, depending on where something happened, I could probably have made my way in and gotten a tow line on or something.
Now, there were others in the group. I won't say I was the most skilled in the group, because I wasn't, but I think I was pretty representative of aggregate skill level of the group as a whole. Perhaps John, or Amnon had confidence they could get in to help in case of problems, I dunno, I didn't ask. One thing is pretty certain though, the amount of resources available to render assistance was not proportional to the number in the group.
Right, so in he goes. We all of us stayed outside paddling along. Periodically we'd lose sight of him. At one point we lost him for perhaps two minutes or so in what proved to be the most dramatic portion of his inside run right at the point, a clear violation of pretty much all aspects of CLAP. And that's pretty much the story. As usual (but not always) nothing happened. He had a grand time, nobody got hurt, radios and tow belts were not deployed, and everyone returned home happy.
Someone who spends a lot (a lot) of time on the water once told me, "when you're on the water as much as we are, anything that can happen does happen" and then proceeded to tell me about the time someones shoelace got hooked on a foot peg while they were upside down, and how somebody else got their PFD got hooked onto a back deck cleat (while they were upside down), boomers stripping decks and PFD pockets, heart attacks, and rather a litany of incidents and issues. And I've really taken that to heart. I'm very, very safety conscious on the water. First because I don't want to get hurt or killed, second because I don't want to see anyone get hurt or killed and, third, because I think it's ones responsibility to not have to call in help because they might get hurt or killed. (That might sound a little maudlin but I'm not a doom and gloom guy. Honest.)
Which leads me to the point of my little story here. Had this been, say, a paid excursion or some other event where I was "in charge" I would have said no to the guy going inside. I deemed it unsafe or, more specifically, too risky. In a club paddle though that sort of hierarchy doesn't really exist. It's not terribly easy to say no to something like this, even when you're the trip leader. Perhaps you don't want to seem paranoid, or not fun loving, or a wimp, or whatever. The whole duty of care thing suddenly comes under attack by a bunch of other human constraints. And that happens a whole lot on club paddles in a variety of forms. Groups get widely dispersed, people lose sight of others, folks have inadequate equipment or skills for what they're doing, and like that. I guess that's entirely normal and, like I said, usually it works out fine.
But every time I see something like that all I hear is, "anything that can happen does happen".
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