CLAPing and Towing

(This is long. Sorry I just didn't have time to make it shorter.)

One of the spans of the San Francisco Bay Bridge is being rebuilt because apparently the old span will not likely survive a big earth quake. It's been under construction for a really long time so I decided to lead a club trip out to the bridge so we could inspect the progress being made. And also because the bridge is quite a spectacle. Awesome in fact. But awesome in the dictionary sense of the word, not the current colloquial sense. One of the participants had to be put under tow for about 2 miles or so and, in that process, I made some mistakes and learned a few things. I thought I'd write them down.

Conditions were quite tame. Predicted winds were SW 5kts. Currents were relatively light, 1.33 knots max flood under the bridge itself and those not until 3.5 hours after we launched (assuming the nominal 3 miles per hour rate).It was sunny and the air temperature was predicted to be in the low 70s. Fall on the bay is full of days like this. Just...nice. It was a nice day to be out on the water.

The plan was to circumnavigate Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island in a counter clockwise direction, arrive under the bridge and eww and aww at it for a bit and then head back to our put in. I'd estimated the distance at about 10 miles with a guesstimate time on water of a little over 3 hours. Our route took us across the current and then only if we were quite slower than I'd anticipated.

I'm moderately religious about doing a safety talk before a paddle. Unless I'm alone. Then I don't do a safety talk because that would be strange and I'm strange enough already. Or so I'm told. Anyway sometimes the talk is as simple as "Don't die, stay in shouting distance". Other times I cover signals, closest to a capsize handles it, everyone holds position when a rescue happens, etc. It really depends on who is there, where we are, stuff like that. Environmentals if you will. But always with the safety talk. My preference is to do it on shore for various reasons but on this day that wasn't possible as folks just got on the water. I asked them to stay close by the for the safety talk though.

After we got on the water I covered our route, the estimated distance and time, and asked everyone to stay in shouting distance with the request that if you didn't see anyone in front of you please look behind you to make sure you weren't rabitting away. For myself I had my "don't ask just pack it" kit and part of that is a tow belt.

We crossed fairly directly from our put in to the east side of Treasure Island. As we approached the island there is a channel that larger (than us) pleasure craft use. It was a slow day with not much traffic but I maintain that practicing good practice is good practice so I gathered everyone up in a bunch, explained that this was a channel (just in case) and told them I wanted to cross it together. This was accomplished somewhat but by the time we got across the group had dispersed fairly well in both dimensions. This was a sign to which I should have paid better attention.

The northeast tip of TI has a current on it that can sometimes be insurmountable. Today was not that day but I'd estimate there was a current of about half a knot or so. The water was soft and swirly as it gets around sticky-outty bits. I headed around first, but stopped in the soft water so as to not loose sight of anyone. I did not ask anyone to stop and wait  once they got around. Once the last person got around I just paddled along myself and soon found myself at the front of the group. As we approached the north west tip of the island I stopped again to watch for everyone to get around. This time when I looked back though one of the members was quite a ways back. I don't recall the exact distance but almost certainly more than a hundred yards. That's too far, at least for me, since I had no way of communicating with this guy and that's just a really bad thing. Says I.

I held the group up to wait for the slow fellow. Another of the group members had stayed fairly close to him and he relayed to me that he'd asked slow fellow if he was nervous in the conditions or if he was tired, or what. SF said he was a little tired. Once he caught up we continued down the west side. I talked with SF briefly and he also told me he was just tired. I was right next to him at this point and watched him carefully. I deduced he was in fact quite uncomfortable with the conditions. His focus point was on his bow and close to the water around him, he was fetalizing and his form was stiff. If he was tired it was a decent bet that was a significant factor in his fatigue. We were about half way into the paddle. I have quite an appreciation with being nervous in conditions so I informed him that once we got around the southern tip of the island things got flat calm. Knowing that the end is in sight, so to speak, has always made things a little easier for me.

We stopped for lunch on a small beach that was absolutely not on Yerba Buena Island because that would be trespassing on Coast Guard property and that would be wrong. So we didn't land on a rocky little beach under the bay bridge were we couldn't be seen from above. And we didn't have a snack or lunch on a beach like that. I didn't have lunch with me. I'd really been expecting a short 3.5 hour paddle at most and so had brought only some snacks. However the impact of SF was that we were about half way into our paddle and we'd been out for 2.5 hours. Beyond insufficient food of course was the issue of currents. I'd assumed(!) we'd not have to worry about currents much at all since we'd be back on shore by max and out of the main flow well before the 90% hour kicked in.

I sat down with SF while were weren't on a beach on YB and again told him conditions would be flat calm after we got around that point right there (I pointed to it). I asked if he was ok, and was he tired and so forth. I mentioned that the current was going to be a little bit more than I'd planned and I might put him under tow if he was too slow crossing it. He didn't seem happy about that but didn't reject the idea.

Once back on the water and around the corner SF seemed quite rejuvenated. He stayed within a couple of boat lengths of me as we went under the bridge and when I gathered everyone again for the crossing he was right there. I started the crossing and fairly quickly the group had split into fairly wide spread groups of 2 and 3. Even though it was just a 1 knot current I decided not to stop and collect the group in the middle of it. So I lost sight of people as they went behind barges that are there to hold bridge building supplies. I chewed my lip until they came back into sight. I cursed club paddle politics. I really, really cursed a paddling culture which seems to violently eschew professional training. Sigh.

After a while one of the paddlers (a BBB alum BTW) who had stayed with the main group (i.e. me) mentioned that folks had spread out a bit. She was right of course but I explained I didn't want to stop in the middle of the current and, to myself, I was sort of not in the mood to herd cats. Things would probably work. Probably. I did though take a look behind me at that point and saw, to my great sadness, SF about two hundred yards behind me.

He was tired. He'd paddle two strokes and then put his paddle down. Two strokes, paddle down. Fuck. Just fuck. I paddled back to talk to him and, fuck again, snap a tow on. As I approached I asked, pointlessly, how he was doing and he responded, pointedly, "tired". He asked how far it was and I told him about 1.5 miles. He commented that he could make it. I just didn't feel like explaining that we were in a current being set down and at his pace the 1.5 mile was going to be rather a bit longer. So I just told him I was going to put a tow on for a little while and let him catch his breath.

I started towing and, after about 2 hours (read: 10 minutes or so), received an offer from two folks to assist. One I was forced to turn down as his tow system consisted of 30 feet of line with two carabiners on it. I'm not sure how bad things would have to be for me to attach myself to another craft in that fashion but much worse than they were right then. I did accept the offer for an assist from someone who had a quick release tow system. So it was SF, me in the middle and the helper. Everyone else continued paddling and they were soon far, far ahead. Entirely out of touch.

Thus began the long (long. No longer than that. It was long. Or it seemed long) slog back. The helper guy was no doubt helping but he happened to be using a greenland paddle and I was pretty much constantly over running him. I think this disparity in ability to apply force (greenland versus the fat ass euro blade I paddle with) has some profound implications. One thing that was immediately obvious was that I was glad I was in the middle of the tow. Strictly speaking I should not even have been in the tow. I certainly should not have been in the middle where I was essentially unable to disengage on my own to address other circumstances that might arise. However, in this case, had I been at the front I would have been towing two boats for much of the distance.

Total time for the tow was about 50 minutes or so. I was exhausted when we got back into the flat calm protection of the spot we launched from. Thankfully nothing else happened. My ability to influence a circumstance on the water was severely diminished. If SF, for example, had ended up requiring a rafted two I'm not sure if I could have towed the raft back myself. (Remember the rest of the group was gone, far ahead.)

This was my second time towing for real. The first time I was not the leader, and the tow was short, perhaps 10 minutes. I had huge amounts of support around me (Ben Lawry and Sean Morley). They kept the group close by, etc. and therefore I was only concerned with towing.

This time it was me and I had to be concerned with the group and the towing. Ultimately I failed. SF was returned safe and sound but I pretty much lost control of the group and, as I said, I was at my limit when we got back and that's just not where you want to be if you've some sense of responsibility to the group.

In the end I think I did several things wrong. As soon as I saw SF was not able to keep up I probably should have adjusted the trip to be shorter. My admonition to the group to stay in shouting distance was insufficient. Ideally I would have liked to have said the trip would operate under the principles of CLAP, but few participants would have known what that means. I have another introduction that I'll use in future. When folks started getting far in front during the tow I should have called them back. Not doing so allowed for an unsafe condition to arise. I succumbed to club paddle politics which is to say that I didn't want to rag on folks to do things "correctly". I put that in quotes for obvious reasons but I'll stand firmly by the notion that staying in a group, adjusting trips to accomodate individual paddler requirements and striving to be not exhausted is "correct".

I do wish more folks took the time to learn what CLAP is, why it is, and it's value. I would be very happy if "competent member of a group", when it comes to kayaking, wasn't translated into "I can paddle in those conditions". They are, I believe, very different things.

Finally, ultimately, some might say this whole thing is a little pedantic. Truly the San Francisco Bay is a pretty safe place to paddle, at least in most of it, and so long as you don't get run over. There're tons of people around all the time, there are something like 10 billion outs (more or less), the water isn't that cold, etc. If I hadn't towed SF guy the most likely worst case outcome would have been he'd have gone under the bridge, hit land and called a cab for a 15 minute ride back. So pedantic, maybe. But I see no reason not to think about how to save cab fare.