Kayaking Fatality: A Survivor's Perspective

Below: Tim Gutman, East Coast (US) kayaker who lost his life while paddling with a friend off Biddeford Pool in southern Maine, a New England coastal area known for its bold seas, heavy storm surge and terribly cold water:

Tim and his friend Brandon Andrusic lost sight of each other not long after launching near dusk into four to five-foot storm waves. Brandon landed on uninhabited Wood Island where he hunkered down for a long, anxious night as conditions worsened.

Below: Wood Island, coastal southern Maine, where Brandon sought shelter after their late afternoon trip went awry, leading to a US East Coast kayaking fatality. Portland Press Herald photo.

Near daybreak, the seas manageable, Brandon paddled ashore and used a pay phone to call for help - by then too late.

Tim's battered body was recovered, about half a dozen miles , in the day.

Brandon wrote in a local Maine newspaper of the accident's emotional toll.

Tim Gutman, his friend, was an admissions counselor at the University of New England and a 1989 graduate of Bowdoin College. After taking an MA degree in Mathematics from Penn State, he went on to earn his PHD at the University of New Hampshire.

Both the Coast Guard and the Portland Press Herald reported on the search for Tim with an increasing sense of fatalism.

Some pointed commentary came from local kayakers whose opinions were less harsh and judgmental than commentary on forums elsewhere.

But then in usual fashion, the Monday morning quarterbacking to a took turn for the brutal and uninformed.

More than a few paddlers, commenting on forums from locales hundreds of miles inland, had a hayday piling in on the accident with revolting judgments made out of ignorance and superiority.

-- all the usual Darwin award crap.

Perhaps the most salient point is that it seems the two paddlers didn't leave a verbal or written float plan with a friend who would have known to call local marine rescue personnel had they not heard from the guys after a specified time - a technique known in some circles as using a trip monitor.

That the pair launched so close to dusk likely contributed to the accident.

One safety aphorism we often hear is the rule of three: once three things go wrong, the fourth leads to trouble.

In this case the three wrongs might be:

1. launching near dusk - though many go out safely after dark
2. launching near dusk in rough conditions - though, likewise, many do the same
3. launching near dusk in rough conditions without asking a trip monitor to alert rescue personnel after an agreed-upon time

Had one of the paddlers been able to make a mayday vhf radio call, here's what it likely would have sounded like.

The recording comes from the 13th Coast Guard's District's ever-expanding database of downloadable audio and video files. It doesn't take but a moment to hear the fear in this caller's voice.

The call was made on scene after a scuba diving accident in Long Island Sound, New York.

That case ended tragically too, in a drowning, the result of the escalation of a chain of events that began with dropping a piece of gear, trying to retrieve it, and getting caught in the Sound's fast currents.

The rule of three.

As the surviving diver said in an interview, had he gone in to save his partner, he would likely have drowned too.

There may be a parallel to the case in Maine. Had Brandon stayed on the water after dark to search for Tim, he likely would have also endangered his own life.

North American Kayak Fishing

Submersible VHF Radios/Part 1

Few boaters take electronics more seriously than fishermen, so you'd understand why fishing glossies keep their readers up-to-date on the latest offerings from marine VHF radio and GPS manufacturers.

Here's a relatively new marine VHF that caught my eye in Saltwater Sportsman: the Standard Horizon HX 500S, a waterproof and fully submersible 5-watt VHF. It costs about $120 and includes a charger and drop-in cradle:
One caveat is that the radio is made by Standard Horizon, a company whose quality control has been spotty over the years. Some models were plagued by leaky gaskets, others by poor soldering.

About five years ago I helped organize a group buy of VHF radios for an East Coast (US) organization. All told we bought twenty Standard Horizon HX 350's that yielded a warranty return rate of about 40%.

In other words, eight radios had to be returned due to manufacturing defects. A few were replaced on warranty three and four times.

Bad design by the company. But Standard stood by their warranty and patiently replaced each radio as it crapped out.

One of the latest handheld VHFs by Standard, the HX500S, has two features to recommend it out of the box, at least to my eye: a high capacity mAh nickel metal hydride battery (no memory problems, meaning that the battery doesn't get stuck on a certain recharge capacity) and a built-in LED strobe programmed to flash SOS.

I still use a Standard HX150, big as a housebrick and almost as heavy, that I bought on clearance ten years ago from my local West Marine. The radio still works fine, cracks in its case and scratches on its LED screen notwithstanding.

If you don't have a VHF radio yet and are curious about their use, see links below for audio files edited and transcribed from the US Coast Guard's media site. The files open a door on what VHF radio communications sound like, particularly on distress channel 16:

mayday
grounded vessel's call is picked up by two Coast Guard stations
scuba mayday
a fatality: caller's understandable panic garbles communications
mayday
sinking vessel gives broad local descriptors of its location
pan-pan
caller is switched to channel 22a by the Coast Guard
false distress call
caller was arrested, indicted, fined and jailed
VHF radio's utility in paddllers' rescue by a Coast Guard helicopter
copyright 2008 Just Another Guy Named Dave

Submersible VHF Radios/2

Below: Icom's submersible floating M34 marine VHF radio. One issue with this particular radio is that it won't float if you pack it with its optional alkaline battery tray, a choice you'll likely make on extended trips once re-charging its lithium-ion battery pack is no longer an option.
Couple of reminders if you buy a submersible vhf radio:

• If you're a saltwater paddler, rinse your vhf in freshwater when you get home
• Regularly inspect your radio's stainless steel contact points, i.e., the antenna port and contact points for the recharger, for discoloration or corrosion. If you discover either, rub off the fouling with a scotch-brite pad
• Give the radio a shake before you broadcast. Water tends to collect in the slits in the faceplaces of submersible VHFs' speaker/microphone ports. If you don't shake the water out, your voice (and what you hear) will be garbled

Next post below gives detailed looks at Icom's M34 Submersible VHF.
The radio looks pretty good to me. And with a street price of about $170 US, it's a good deal.

If you don't have a VHF radio yet, see links below for audio files edited and transcribed from the US Coast Guard's media site.

The files open a door on what VHF radio communications sound like, particularly on distress channel 16:

mayday
grounded vessel's call is picked up by two Coast Guard stations
scuba mayday
a fatality; caller's understandable panic garbles communications
mayday
sinking vessel gives broad local descriptors of its location
pan-pan
caller is switched to channel 22a, as protocol, by the Coast Guard
false distress call
caller was arrested, indicted, fined and jailed
VHF radio's utility in paddllers' rescue by a Coast Guard helicopter

copyright 2008 Just Another Guy Named Dave

Submersible VHF Radios/3

Below: Rear view of the Icom M34 VHF. The molded opening near the top is for the belt clip, the three stainless steel contact points at the bottom for the lithium-ion battery recharger. In particular, the recharge contacts on some radios have been problematic, either due to poor soldering that breaks the circuit or faulty gaskets that let moisture seep in.

Check around for the online scuttlebutt, then, on your radio before you buy it, to be sure it doesn't have known fault points.
Below: Other-side view of the radio. The action shot here is of the PTT button. You need to compress the PTT button (push-to-talk) on a VHF when you want to talk. You have to release it to listen:
A caveat: The PTT button can be activated by the pressure of the radio against your arm, chest, shoulder, or even its own strap. Watch out for that! more than one paddler with a VHF strapped to their pfd has inadvertently compressed the PTT button on their VHF for hours at a time. Not only will you tie up your working channel, but no one will be able to call you.

Below: Top view of the radio. The Icom has the traditional skyscraper shape, tall and narrow, that's been pretty much supplanted these days by low and squat, like a deck of cards, found more recent hand-held HFs. Form factor is a matter of preference, really. Some paddlers prefer a small radio that clips unobtrusively to a shoulder strap or that fits into the pocket of their pfd.

Key is to check the case's seams for beefiness and your sense of their waterproofness. The seam on the top of this radio looks pretty good:
If you don't have a VHF radio yet, see links below for audio files I edited and transcribed from the US Coast Guard's media site. The files open a door on what VHF radio communications sound like, particularly on distress channel 16:

mayday
grounded vessel's call is picked up by two Coast Guard stations
scuba mayday
a fatality; caller's understandable panic garbles communications
mayday
sinking vessel gives broad local descriptors of its location
pan-pan
caller is switched to channel 22a, as protocol, by the Coast Guard
false distress call
caller was arrested, indicted, fined and jailed
VHF radio's utility in paddllers' rescue by a Coast Guard helicopter
copyright 2008 Just Another Guy Named Dave
photos Icom
BlogCatalog

Submersible VHF Radios/4

Icom makes some fine claims for this handheld marine VHF, the M34, which is submersible: 9 hours of operating time on a single charge reduced to 5 hours if you broadcast continually.

Below: the front face of the M34. Look carefully into the top right corner of the LED screen and you'll see that the radio includes a function lock (the key icon):
A function lock is a worthwhile option to look for in a VHF. Lock your radio's functions and you won't accidentally switch channels from, say, your group's working channel to one no one's listening on.

Accidental channel switches are common on VHFs. Switch channels without knowing and others in your group won't be able to contact you unless you've agreed to monitor another channel, such as 16.

Just as accidental channel switches are common, so is accidentally lowering your radio's volume to the extent that you can't hear anyone calling you, and thus assume no one is.

Accidental volume and channel switches typically happen when the channel or volume up/down button gets nudged by your shoulder, paddle shaft, or pfd.

Below: side view of the Icom M34, antenna shorn. Note the stainless steel post for the antenna. This contact point has been problematic, in particular, for some manufacturers in the past, including Standard Horizon. Too-thin and not-robust-enough gaskets have made this an entry point for water and moisture, and thus internal damage, on some Standard Horizon radios:
If you don't have a VHF radio yet, see links below for audio files I edited and transcribed from the US Coast Guard's media site. The files open a door on what VHF radio communications sound like, particularly on distress channel 16:

mayday
grounded vessel's call is picked up by two Coast Guard stations
scuba mayday
a fatality; caller's understandable panic garbles communications
mayday
sinking vessel gives broad local descriptors of its location
pan-pan
caller is switched to channel 22a, as protocol, by the Coast Guard
false distress call
caller was arrested, indicted, fined and jailed
VHF radio's utility in paddllers' rescue by a Coast Guard helicopter
copyright 2008 Just Another Guy Named Dave
BlogCatalog