For my birthday...

A few weeks ago I was at the GGSKS doing an incident management class. The coach, one Tom Bergh (excellent coach says I), had us doing rescues nearish some rocks. At least nearisher than I'd done rescues before.

Anyways it's my turn to go victim and I jump in, flip my boat upright, and wait for the rescuer to start calling the shots, as they do. Here comes the rescuer who tells me to flip my boat upside down. Go to the back of the boat! Of course I'm thinking she's going to ask me to push down on the back of my boat, so I'm fixin' to loose my fucking mind, as I do when this push down on on the stern thing happens in my presence. And I'm looking at Tom like, "are you going to let this happen?" Tom, who is nothing if not calm and collected it seems, asks if the rescuer want's to empty the boat first. I'm thinking he's thinking the same thing I'm thinking about this "rescue". The rescuer tells Tom she is emptying the boat and then instructs me to help her flip the boat upright so she can get it onto her deck. Everything is sort of a blur from then on because I stopped paying a lot of attention and tried to absorb this particular form of "rescue" that I've never (ever) seen or heard of before.

My mumble-mumbledy-ith birthday is fast approaching and I'm at the age where birthdays are not a reason to get particularly excited. Depressed, maybe. Excited, no. And this means that I'd be just as happy to not have a birthday (except for maybe a dinner out) at all and so ask family for no presents or stuff or anything. There's really nothing I need and, excepting time, nothing I really want.

That said, being American, I am inculcated with the seagull mentality and so feel comfortable, if not good, about asking total strangers for stuff. For my birthday. Which is fast approaching. What is it that I'm asking for? Simply this; could we all agree on a single first pass go to rescue process that everyone is taught and knows? Lemme 'splain.

The value of homogeneity in process is that things can occur more efficiently because there is less need to communicate about normalcies. A perhaps useful example might be traffic flow. Traffic flows in congested areas, like where I live, are well understood by those who participate. Be in this lane now so I don't have to cut across three lanes later on. If you go to an unfamiliar place then you become inefficient and the locals curse at you if you don't follow the normal flows. Indeed, during a commute, the only time I (and I know others) spend a lot of time thinking about the road (use the force Luke!) is when it's different than the ninety eleven times I'd driven the route before. Construction, accident, whatever.

Wrapping that back to seagulling, what I want is that if I'm in a rescue I'm not surprised by what the rescuer asks for and vice versa. I think the mediocrity principle can work very well here. Most rescues are going to be typical, right? The victim probably won't be injured, probably can hoist themselves into their boat, the boat being rescued probably will need to be emptied, probably won't have a hole in it, etc. I'd like for everyone to perform the same process for a rescue for that common circumstance. I'm not asking, for my birthday, for only one rescue to ever be used. Clearly someone injured or unable to swim onto their deck or whatever is going to need a different process. But that's not what I'm talking about.

So to the specifics of my birthday request. If one of you three reading this are a paddler, could you please ask your local instructor/coach/guru to consult with other instructor/coach/gurus and agree on a single process that everyone will be taught as the first pass go to rescue? If you're an instructor/coach/guru could you take it as given that you've been asked and consult?

Thanks, in advance, for my birthday present. It's what I've always wanted.

Night, night

Andy, who runs a local kayak school here, asked on the club mailing list if anyone felt like paddling around Angel Island (yes please). At night (err, what?).

It has been both observed and mentioned that stupid is something I'm fairly familiar with. However even I am aware that the salient condition of night is dark, at least around here. Among it's many, sometimes admirable, features dark has the effect of making seeing more difficult than it is when it is light. And, although I've never actually done the math, seeing I'd guess is directly proportional to paddling without falling over. That is more seeing, less falling, less seeing more falling. So calling for a paddle at night was, according to my math, an entirely inefficient way of calling for a swim. But whatever. I wasn't doing anything, I've got a drysuit (i.e. a cold water swimsuit) and I'm working this year on increasing my stupid just a bit. So I went. Awesome, glad I did.

I have paddled at night before, up in the San Juans as part of a 4 star training. It was, in fact, a night navigation. As you might expect that's when you actually navigate using time and a compass and stuff. It was pretty interesting I guess but there were very few lights and I got a touch of vertigo at one point and I didn't enjoy that at all. The thing Andy was organizing was quite a bit different.

First off, it really was like walking around in your backyard at night. I knew where to expect jobbly bits, roughly how far to be off of the points to avoid rocks, and like that. Navigating with a compass was really not required (but I did have one. I always carry a compass.) Second, this was in the San Francisco bay. A lot of people live in San Francisco and, coincidentally, there's a lot of lights around the bay. A lot of lights. So it was never pitch black. Third, there's rather more traffic in the bay.

We got on the water around 18:10PST, just after sunset. I liked that timing because it gave me (perhaps all of us) a chance to loosen up when we could actually see so that was nice. About half way through the crossing to Angel Island it actually got dark and that's when things got interesting.

"Is that a boat there?", I asked. "Where?", "which direction?", "over there?". Right, first lesson in night paddling, nobody can see you point very well. Also bearings relative to a clock face doesn't work since nobody can see where your boat is pointing. So after some "see the rock at Point Blunt..." stuff we all decide that, yes, it's a boat. Actually a ship. Here's a picture:

That of course lead to all of the "where's it going?", "what's it doing?" that generally begins the process of mild panic one sometimes get's when encountering large vessels behaving in unexpected ways. In this case the ship was closer to Angel Island than any of us had experienced before. During the day.

Second lesson of paddling at night. Lots of lights on shore are a serious pain in the ass. It was really difficult to discern exactly where the vessel was heading. Was that red light on the ship or shore? Is that a mast light? The many lights, which helped make it easy to discern the rocks at Point Blunt and the texture of the water, made it hard to discern the lights of other vessels. This was the case all night and I think it's a fundamental issue. Radar would be handy.

Anyway we finally figured out which light was the ships port light, and which two were mast lights. We ended up taking the ship to our left. I've never had that happen before on this crossing. Despite the successful outcome of our encounter it was fairly nerve racking and, I think, ample demonstration of the utility of day.

After that it was an entirely pleasant paddle. Forecasted winds of 7-13 kts never appeared which lead to, for the area, quite calm conditions all the way around. Here's a picture someone paddling a well glo-sticked boat in the tranquil conditions:

Total time on the water was about 3 hours. We saw several seals and disturbed, unfortunately, a couple birds who were floating on the water and we didn't see until it was too late. Here's a couple nature shots:

All in all it was an enjoyable experience. I don't think paddling a night is something I'll do regularly. It's a little uninteresting, not being able to see very much. It's a little disconcerting when you get bobbled by some unexpected wave or wake. And it's just a little stupid.

Eddies and stuff

I spent some time under the Golden Gate bridge during the GGSKS playing about on the eddy line and in the currents there and found it to be a really comfortable place, at least for me. So I organized a club trip and headed out with two others to see what we could find. Turns out not much that day.

The forecasted max flood was 3.13 knots and this just wasn't enough to make the waters interesting at all. There was certainly an eddy line but it was so weak there was almost no need to edge when crossing it, and hopping up to the eddy above the north tower was very easy. Here's a picture of the other two coming around the corner:

You might notice that the water is pretty flat. Well, really flat. So, with plan A a failure we quickly opted for plan B, which was to paddle along the shore out to Point Bonita and back. Paddling along this shore is sort of a part of the SF paddling canon. The shoreline is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. As such it has rangers and things like that. Close to Point Bonita there is this:

See that white building up there? We concluded that was a house. Like for rangers and the people who work the park to live in. Like a perq. That could be entirely wrong of course but I hope not. It would be nice if the ranger types, who get paid far too little (says I), were able to at least live in an idyllic place like that.

We turned around at Point Bonita. I and one of the guys had some time constraints and we didn't have time to go around the point. Here's a picture of our view on the way back:

That doesn't suck.

One thing worth mentioning. When we turned around we ran into a paddler from a different club who was by himself. He'd paddled out of the bay instead of into the bay where the group from his club had gone. Anyway he asked if he could join us on the way back and, of course, we said yes. But here's the cool part.

As the leader of this little trip I went out with three (me + 2) and came back with 4 (me + 2 + 1).  That means I have a paddler credit that I can use at some future date if need be. So I've got that goin' for me.

Why are some better paddlers than others?

I am always astounded by how good some paddlers are. I mean really holy-shit-look-at-that good. I'm not in the same league with those folks and today I found out why. Here look; scientist find gene for the love of the sea. Now I don't feel like it's me not getting out on the water so much. Rather my deficiencies are caused by something beyond my control, genetics. Gattaca had a point I guess.

This is why I love the internets, you can find out anything you want. And it's all true too.