This is What's Going to Kill You!

You may have wondered why, for the last seven years, nearly every article I’ve written included “The Requisite Note on Safety”.   The reason is simple.  The articles are focused on how to make the most of limited opportunities once you're on the water.  They're written to excite and entice fellow or future kayak anglers by showing what's possible.  Thus, there's been limited space for an in-depth discussion on what might kill you, until now.
 
According to US Coast Guard statistics, paddle sports deaths (those that involve Canoes and Kayaks) have been on a steady rise for the past 10 years. To be specific, since 2005, these unfortunate occurrences have increased by a staggering 78%.  This trend doesn't need to continue.


2021 US Coast Guard Data of Accidents on US Waterways

Nobody who finds him or herself in a life and death situation starts that day thinking they're going to die.  If they had, they'd have taken the time to avoid the scenario that has them scrambling for redemption.  Better yet, they'd have long since identified all of the potential threats to their continued existence and acted to minimize those risks.

Of course, the statistics aren't specific to kayak fishermen but you can be sure that all of the responsible failure modes are applicable to our humble craft.  To make matters worse, pursuing the Northwest’s premier species offers a whole new catalog of threats.
The first threat that comes to most people's mind is drowning.  While this is often a USCG official cause of death, it's facilitated by controllable factors such as hypothermia, adverse weather, fatigue, inexperience or lack of preparation; Things that can be mitigated with proper equipment, an action plan, practice or informed avoidance.


2 Kayaks Towed Back to Shore Due to A Lack of Preparation (by Sandy Weedman)

This is What’s Gonna Kill You:

Cold Shock:  An immediate, physical reaction to sudden, unprotected contact with cold water.  Cold shock causes an involuntary deep inhalation followed by uncontrolled panting.  This involuntary breathing can facilitate drowning.  If that weren’t enough, the added strain on a victim’s heart can, in some situations, induce cardiac arrest.

Hypothermia:  A drop in the body’s core temperature to below 95deg F.  Mild hypothermia is characterized by shivering, loss of small motor control and confusion.  Moderate hypothermia results in profound confusion, a loss of strength and large muscle control. Severe hypothermia will cause your heart to stop beating.  Hypothermia can happen even in water approaching 70deg F, though it happens progressively faster as the water temperature drops.

Constraint/Constriction:  Every length of cord, cable or line on your kayak is potentially deadly.  All it takes is one loop around a limb or your neck to limit your mobility and thus your ability to reach the surface or re-enter your kayak.  If that line is attached to an anchor, a crab trap or a big angry fish, you’ll have mere seconds to react.
 
Blunt Force Trauma:  This is probably the least controllable threat and includes a wide range of events that culminate in a great deal of kinetic energy being transferred to your body.  Sources include but are not limited to, contact with a transiting power boat, hitting a branch while floating thru rapids, getting hit in the head by your cannonball weight or having a large fish land on you  (Don’t laugh, this has killed people).

Weather:  Freezing temperatures, gale force winds and lightning are, of course, threats to your survival.  That’s obvious.  What’s not so obvious is the impact of wet clothes from a spring squall, a thick fog bank or an unexpected change in wind intensity or direction that catches you miles from your take out.

Surf:  Surf conditions in the NW can be deceptive.  What looks like a 3 foot swell from shore might actually be a 6 foot swell when rolling across the outer sandbars.  Worse yet, given our proximity to the swell generating North Pacific, a morning of flat and glassy conditions sometimes turns into an afternoon of 12-15 foot swells.
 
Medical Emergency:  This category speaks for itself and becomes more of an issue with age.


The Air May Be Warm but the Ocean is Usually 40deg - 50deg in the Summer  (by Scott Brewer)

Strategies for Survival:

PFD's (Personal Floatation Device's): A PFD won't save your life on its own but it will give you the time you need to implement your recovery plan.   A properly sized and adjusted PFD is the first piece of safety equipment that a kayak angler should purchase.  It should not obstruct re-entry to a kayak in the case of a "wet exit" and must be comfortable enough to wear all day. 
To increase the likelihood that you'll wear your PFD consistently, regardless of conditions, select one that can be used to store your most common fishing accessories such as scissors, pliers, fishing license, etc.

Immersion Gear:  Most bodies of water in Oregon and Washington are too cold to be tolerated for long without appropriate immersion gear.  The colder the water, the quicker symptoms of hypothermia will manifest. 
Nobody expects to fall out of their kayak while fishing, unless they're performing a surf landing, but accidents do happen.  Thus, anytime that you're fishing in cold water, regardless of the ambient air temperature, you should be wearing a wetsuit or a drysuit with underlayers appropriate to the water temperatures.  This is doubly true in the ocean where waves, currents and chop can complicate, and thus delay, reentry to your kayak.

Safety Flags:  Nobody wants to be run over by a power boat and there is simply no better way to be seen on the water than by flying a safety flag.  For maximum effect, the flag should be brightly colored and fly at least 5 feet above the water line. 


A Poor-Man's Safety Flag (by Sandy Weedman)

Safety Knife:  A safety knife has one purpose: To cut you free from something that is constraining or constricting you.  It isn’t for cutting bait or cleaning fish.  It is to save your life under the worst possible circumstances.
Your safety knife needs to meet the following criteria every time you fish:
1) Be sharp    2) Be attached to your person at all times   3) Be readily accessible to either hand
You will hopefully never have to access your safety knife on the water.  That said, you will want to practice drawing, holding and using your safety knife until you’re sure that you can do it with either hand, upside down, in moving water, with a cord around a hand, your torso or your neck.

Re-entry Practice:  There is no substitute for experience, except maybe for practice.  Even experienced kayak anglers benefit from regular practice re-entering their kayaks.  This should be done while wearing your fishing PFD to ensure that you know how to accommodate the added girth.
If you aspire to fish the ocean, practice re-entry in the surf.  Better yet, practice paddling out and surfing back in, on small days, without your rods or tackle.  The surf landings will provide ample opportunities to hone your re-entry skills.
If you struggle to re-enter your kayak, consider purchasing a “Self Rescue Ladder”.  These handy devices help to keep your kayak upright while assisting you in climbing over the rail.  Just remember to store this device in an area that is easily accessible but doesn’t create a constraint or constriction hazard.   


Surfing Back In With a Limit (by Colleen Kulp)

Fish With a Partner:  There are many threats that can’t be planned for.  In these cases, it’s extremely helpful to have a reliable partner nearby.  Sometimes, simply having a level head to talk you thru a difficult situation can be a game changer.
 
Research!:  In the age of the internet, there’s no excuse for getting caught off guard by weather or ocean conditions.  Hourly forecasts with excruciating detail are just a click away.  Some of my favorite sources include:  iwindsurf.com for accurate, pinpoint wind forecasts and magicseaweed.com for detailed info on swell height, direction and period.
For further information on venues, rigging and best practices, check out NorthWestKayakAnglers.com.


Escaping a Fog Bank on an Otherwise Sunny, 20deg Day (by Jeff Anderson)

The Requisite Note on Fun: 

What you just waded thru may seem ominous, scary or overwhelming but in practice becomes the background for a lifetime of fun and exciting fishing trips.  There’s no need to be afraid when you’re prepared.

Well said sir, and as an ambassador of this sport and one of the OGs here your words carry weight so thank you for putting this together and putting it out there for us all.

Well over half of all paddlesport deaths are captains with <10 hours experience.  I’ll see if I can find the exact number.  That is where the focus of education effort needs to be. Move the big rocks first.

Very well written…thanks for sharing!

Spot's explanation and recommendations about the risks of kayaking and kayak fishing are "spot on."  I want to add a few thoughts about the importance of re-entry practice.

I have never had any problem re-entering my 13' Hobie Revolution and my 13' Ocean Kayak Trident.  When snorkeling and speargunning for pike, I re-enter the Trident many times a day with 13-16 pounds on my body and 2-3 pounds on each ankle when wearing swim fins.  I can reliably right and re-enter either kayak in 30 seconds.  However, last year I bought a 12' Pro Angler 360, and was dismayed to discover that it was much harder for me to re-enter the Pro Angler than it was to re-enter my other kayaks.  I can do it, but it's a struggle, and I often would get stuck part of the way into the kayak with the kayak cocked at an angle. These problems are probably partly because I'm getting old and feeble.  I was concerned that in big waves and wind, which is the situation when I'm most likely to end up in the water, the waves might dump my kayak back over before I could re-enter it, I could have several failed re-entry efforts, I could get exhausted, and I could end up hanging on the side of my kayak, developing hypothermia despite wearing a dry suit with insulating layers under neath it.

The time to discover whether you might have difficulty re-entering your kayak in rough water conditions is in a safe practice situation, such as in calm weather near shore or a pool, with friends there to help you.  You do not want to make that dismaying discovery when you suddenly find yourself in rough cold water with nobody nearby to help you.  So I encourage you to practice re-entry regularly, and if you have difficulty re-entering your kayak, figure out what to do about the situation.

I experimented with various ways to make re-entering my Pro Angler faster and more certain, and was discouraged to find that most things didn't help. For example, rope ladders were not helpful, because as soon as I put my weight on the ladder, my feet would go under the kayak.  So don't buy an item of self rescue equipment and assume that it will make re-entry easy.  Try out the equipment, make sure it works for you, and practice with it regularly.

My solution for re-entering my Pro Angler was to mount a telescoping boat ladder on the bow of the Pro Angler. This allows me to quickly and reliably re-enter the kayak, as shown in the following YouTube video:



Another option is to mount a telescoping ladder on the stern of a kayak, but that didn't work for me because I would need to climb over the hard-sided cooler which I strap in my rear cargo area, and over or through various items of fishing gear I have in the rear half of my Pro Angler.

Again, practice re-entry regularly, and learn how to quickly and reliably re-enter your kayak.  Don't wait until you get unexpectedly dumped over to figure out whether you have trouble re-entering your kayak.

Years ago I dumped in a 12 ft sit inside out beyond the south jetty at Newport. I had a pretty reliable Eskimo roll in those days but this time I went all the way over 350 degrees. In the swell, I couldn't get my roll to work again. I did a wet exit, righted the kayak, and....hang on, this is the point...used my paddle float (stored behnd the seat) to get back in. The paddle float saved my ass.

I haven't had to use one in my fnd or revo 13 but I take one just in case. They blow up, attach to your paddle so your paddle can act as an outrigger. You need to have bungies attached to your yak that you can slide the paddle under. That stabilizes the boat so you can climb back in.

I can still re enter without the float even at 73 and had to do it last summer fishing PC with nobaddays. Bruised my rib a little when a wave caught the revo broadside but otherwise it wasn't very hard. However, it's nice to have the paddle float along as backup assistance.

I'm writing this because a lot of sot fishermen aren't familiar with paddle floats. At least those I've talked to a out it. A paddle float definitely saved my ass that time in the sit inside.

I'm writing this because a lot of sot fishermen aren't familiar with paddle floats. At least those I've talked to a out it. A paddle float definitely saved my ass that time in the sit inside.

The best way to climb back onto a sit-on-top kayak is grab the gunwale, kick your feet until you're lying horizontal on the surface, and jerk and push the kayak under your chest.  It only takes seconds. But if you can't make that work, some kind of self-rescue assistance equipment may be necessary.  A disadvantage of some kinds of self-rescue assistance equipment is that they can take a while and some fiddling around to deploy.  However, it's way way better to spend ten minutes getting something like a paddle float set up than it is to spend a couple hours floating in the water next to your kayak hoping for somebody to come along and rescue you because you can't manage to climb back onto it.

With practice, it's possible to rig a paddle float pretty quickly. Couple of minutes in the water.

Great article, as always!

Thanks!

Always good to have these reminders out there both for the newbies and the more experienced.  Thanks for the article!

Always good to have these reminders out there both for the newbies and the more experienced.  Thanks for the article!

plus one.
Wish there was a site like this where I could have read some advice on safety back in the 90s when I first started kayaking fishing in the ocean

Thanks for the reminder Mark. I remember back when I first found this site...guys like you ,Noah and Jeff pounding safety into our heads. And the look you gave me when you saw me at Astoria without my drysuit . Reminds me...l got wrist gaskets that need attention. Hope to see ya on the water!

What a fantastic post and so timely as the weather is improving.

I wanted to highlight the "Constraint/Constriction" danger. After more than a decade of kayak fishing along the Oregon Coast, I consider crabbing to be the most dangerous activity and I recommend that it be considered as such- take it very seriously. Be careful and expect issues with the ropes.

For this, and other potential rope entanglement issues, an 'emergency' knife on your PFD or close at hand is important.  I carry, easily seen on my images, a CRKT Ryan Plan B knife that meets several key criteria- extremely sharp (it's never been used on anything, yet) and aggressively serrated at the back of the blade so that most ropes can be cut with a single action. Another plus is a plastic sheath that keeps the knife secure in it but with a solid tug, I can pull it. 

In many situations, this type of knife is going to get you out of a Constraint/Constriction situation.

 

What a fantastic post and so timely as the weather is improving.

I wanted to highlight the "Constraint/Constriction" danger. After more than a decade of kayak fishing along the Oregon Coast, I consider crabbing to be the most dangerous activity and I recommend that it be considered as such- take it very seriously. Be careful and expect issues with the ropes.

For this, and other potential rope entanglement issues, an 'emergency' knife on your PFD or close at hand is important.  I carry, easily seen on my images, a CRKT Ryan Plan B knife that meets several key criteria- extremely sharp (it's never been used on anything, yet) and aggressively serrated at the back of the blade so that most ropes can be cut with a single action. Another plus is a plastic sheath that keeps the knife secure in it but with a solid tug, I can pull it. 

In many situations, this type of knife is going to get you out of a Constraint/Constriction situation.

Yes.  Reachable by either hand and able to be used with one hand only in case your other hand is pinned.  I keep one on my chest and one on my leg.  This is also something that you should practice.

Great point.

Is leaded rope hard to cut? I remember being surprised the one time I cut it but can't remember if I was surprised at how easy or how hard it was to cut.