Don't get over your head

Yesterday in the Portland Harbor while doing patrol in the fire boat I noticed a guy in a small dingy hanging onto a Jackson cuda SOT. As I looked close there was a guy in the water in a life jacket hanging onto the bow of the dingy. He look to be in distress, how did I come to that conclusion you might ask. Well, he had jeans on a tee shirt what looked like a rental life jacket. Shivering uncontrollably with eyes wide open the size of silver dollars and losing his grip. We ferried over to them and dropped the ladder off the stern of the fire boat and brought the wet, cold, and scared kayaker onto our swim deck. We offered to take him back to the dock where he started his demo of his kayak but he refused. After a short rest he tried to remount the kayak and almost flipped it over while holding onto me. I gave him a brief how to so he would not flip over again. Handed him his paddle and followed him all the way to the dock. I thought for sure he was going to go swimming again. I wonder how the lawsuit would have come out that would be brought by his surviving family members against the kayak shop on Hayden Island.
 1st.  He was either lucky or smart to be wearing a PFD, if not we would for sure be doing a body recovery.
 2nd.  With many people wanting to get into the fun of fishing out of a kayak. Use you head, don't let your pride get the best of you.
 3rd. Go out with another EXPERIENCED kayaker. Take a class. Go to a pool.
 4th. Don't go out by yourself and take the chance of never making it back to the shore. 
Just a word to the wise, be safe out there and for heavens sake use you brain.   

Couldn't of said it more better ^^^^^^^.. I still never go in the salt or river solo.  And I have met s guy in the ocean he was solo and never tried self recovery and wasn't a member so had no one else been out there and he went swimming and couldn't re board it could have been fatal.

the kayak shop on Hayden Island.   

Haha, those guys at it again!  I think they had an entire kayak "class" that had to be rescued 2 years ago.

The problem was he was on a Jackson. If you want to go for a swim rent a Jackson ....
Actually I should talk to someone about that. Kind of a catchy slogan for them.

If you want to go to a shitty shop visit Alder Creek! 

This is a pretty fantastic post I get to bash on two of my least favorite companies.  =) the day is starting off well.

Ha! I just love the candy coating!

Ok ... in all fairness Alder Creek's worst offense was a previous employee, who has since left. Though he was there for quite sometime and they loved him, so by default I assume they are all D-bags.

I had a similar situation last weekend where a kayak was rented to inexperienced kayakers in bad weather conditions. It was an interesting discussion.

http://www.norcalkayakanglers.com/index.php?topic=64792.0