Blame it on the weather, or maybe just the time of year. Search and rescue teams around the world seem to be getting a slew of calls involving errant kayakers.
Some have been innocuous, if not annoying, while others have been truly life threatening. Still others seem to have stemmed from concerned citizens calling in about kayaks they've seen in the water, with no kayakers in sight.
Take the false alarm reported in Diana, N.Y. on Thanksgiving Day. According to local news station WTTI 50 out of Watertown, the Lewis County Sheriff's department got a call about an overturned kayak floating in the Oswegatchie River just after noon.
Seven different local rescue and first responder agencies answered the call, and sent personnel to the river, including dive teams, to look for the missing paddler.
But they ended up finding the owner on land, and concluded no one had been in the water. Makes you wonder what it cost to send all those rescue folks out there -- and I'm sure any of the volunteers who are almost always involved in these efforts didn't appreciate getting pulled away from their Thanksgiving turkey.
In Wellington, New Zealand, rescuers dispatched a helicopter, search boat and rescuers from the police and coast guard to look for two party-goers who launched a kayak into nearby Titahi Bay at 1:30 a.m. When the boat washed ashore empty nearly two hours later, the couple's friend called authorities, according to the Wellington Dominion Post.
But after the search ensued, the pair was found at home, asleep. Police said at least one of the pair was heavily intoxicated, and that the brief search effort would cost well over $2,000.
"They've capsized, swam to shore, didn't tell anyone and went back to bed ... They had no safety equipment and obviously they've wasted a lot of people's time," Maritime Police Sergeant Dave Houston told the newspaper. Westpac rescue helicopter spokesman Dave Greenberg quipped, "We're all there to save lives and it is frustrating to be put up there in the air looking for people who are safe in bed."
More serious was an incident farther north in the country, near Auckland, where rescuers piloting two boats and a helicopter plucked a kayaker from Arkles Bay after he lost his paddle and spent 45 minutes clinging to his capsized boat in frigid waters about a third mile from shore, according to the New Zealand Herald.
Then, there's the report from the Cape Cod Times, where police yanked a paddler from 45 degree waters off Washburn Island after another paddler called for help on his cell phone.
For paddlers, I think there's two important take aways from these reports. First, when you're paddling in cold water, always wear a dry suit, with enough insulating layers underneath to keep you warm. Remember, wearing a dry suit isn't an expensive luxury that's just a "comfort" item during the cooler months. In cold water, it could be the difference between life and death.
Second, as paddlers, we always need to be vigilant of the alarms that are set off by the sight of a lone, overturned kayak. For people who don't paddle, that uniquely eerie image almost always has an assumption of horror behind it.
While the incidents in Watertown, N.Y. and Wellington, New Zealand don't seem to have involved any real danger to the paddlers themselves, the real risk is if authorities and the public become jaded to these kinds of reports.
That's why I always advocate for my paddling brethren to hike back into a river gorge where they had to abandon a broken boat, or retrieve abandoned or lost gear later. Doing so makes sure it doesn't end up at the center of a mystery downstream in the next flood, or cause authorities to launch expensive searches for naught.
As paddlers, it's our first responsibility to keep ourselves safe, and do everything we can to self rescue when we get in trouble. But we also want to be able to call for real help when it's needed -- as it was in Cape Code and Auckland.
Making sure that rescue authorities can trust us to take care of ourselves -- while still coming courageously to our aid when it's really needed -- is a delicate balance that we all have to work to maintain, too.
