Author Topic: Another inland SUP death  (Read 16630 times)

robon

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Another inland SUP death
« on: June 28, 2016, 07:50:17 AM »
I believe this is the 5th SUP drowning death in less than a month in the United States, and the 6th since the beginning of May.  This latest incident occurred on a reservoir in Colorado. The mom was out paddling with her three boys and their friend when a thunderstorm blew in. Comments mentioned the storm blew in fast over the mountains near the reservoir, creating large waves, hail and lighting. The four boys were wearing their pfds and made it back to shore. The mom was wearing an inflatable "life ring" that wasn't activated when her body was found. The family dog was on her board and hasn't been found.

No word if a leash was worn or if the inflatable life ring was defective.

http://distressedmullet.com/2016/06/27/woman-remains-critical-condition/?utm_content=buffer14517&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

http://www.supthemag.com/news/news-four-sup-deaths-over-the-weekend/#OoXuhkCx3WjWaksz.97

http://www.supthemag.com/news/oregon-woman-drowns-after-falling-off-paddleboard/#ZllkLQU3K4ZruVxX.97
« Last Edit: June 28, 2016, 08:07:05 AM by robon »

StinkBait

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Re: Another inland SUP death
« Reply #1 on: June 28, 2016, 09:09:53 AM »
Sad to hear, makes wearing my PFD worth the little discomfort I feel wearing it.

yugi

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Re: Another inland SUP death
« Reply #2 on: June 28, 2016, 01:30:23 PM »
I live on a mountain lake and have sailed my whole life. Yes, storms and winds kick up quick on lakes. Must say that usually the are preceded by HUGE visual warnings. But you would have to know how to read them. And care!

I looked up that lake. Most crossings are about a 1/2 mile. Max about 1.5 miles. My god. If only they knew to just lie on the board and, hell, just let themselves be pushed to the far shore. You can run a full tour around that lake in about 30mins!!!!

When I teach SUP to nOObs I spend a good portion speaking about exactly such situations so peeps can have a clue when a windy situation arises.

Sad. So sad. So smart yet so clueless on just a pond. So avoidable.

[edit to add] IMO the pdf conclusion is media spin. :rolleyes:
We, the paddlers in the know, need to help educate the masses (and then the media) some simple obvious stuff to do when the waves and the wind kicks up.

I live in mountains and pretty much same same story, and sad story, for skiing when venturing beyond the groomers.
« Last Edit: June 28, 2016, 01:48:42 PM by yugi »

Easy Rider

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Re: Another inland SUP death
« Reply #3 on: June 28, 2016, 02:24:37 PM »
Once again such a sad story. 

As mentioned above - the education lies with us - the experienced paddlers - to help those new to the sport. 
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pdxmike

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Re: Another inland SUP death
« Reply #4 on: June 28, 2016, 02:50:46 PM »
Someone drowned in Lake Washington in Seattle a few years ago, close to shore, with another paddler, and wearing an inflatable that he didn't inflate.  It worked perfectly when tested afterwards.  He was a poor swimmer who probably panicked as soon as he hit the water.  So this new one also shows inflatables aren't a great choice for everyone.

But I agree with yugi--getting into a situation where you're relying on a pfd to save you is almost always avoidable, pretty easily.

Also, the dog (assuming he drowned) might also be alive if he'd had a pfd.  And who knows, perhaps the woman drowned because she left her board trying to go after the dog?  If so, and he'd had a pfd, she wouldn't have needed to worry so much about him, and also would have had a handle to grab to get him back on the board easily.  So the dog pfd might have saved her life.

diveChick

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Re: Another inland SUP death
« Reply #5 on: June 28, 2016, 03:13:19 PM »
So very sad!  :( Education is definitely the key. And also preparation. If only she had had an appropriate PFD or even just the knowledge that the lake was very small. Little things can make the biggest difference. This situation makes me thankful for Navionics. My sister called me Sunday night. She is a beginner paddler and she went paddling in the marshes in the sounds of NC Sunday and got lost and a storm was rolling in. She started to panic but remembered that she had turned on her Navionics app that I recommended she put on her phone before she went exploring the marshes. I'm so glad she took my advice! Using the app she saw that she wasn't as far from the landing as she was afraid of and she followed her charted route back to the landing before the storms hit (she also used the app to determine when the storms would arrive). 

surf4food

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Re: Another inland SUP death
« Reply #6 on: June 28, 2016, 03:33:13 PM »
I agree this is sad and that education is the key, but there needs to be come common sense and due diligence also.  If someone cannot swim or is not a confident swimmer they really shouldn't be doing this, even with a non inflatable PDF.

zachhandler

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Re: Another inland SUP death
« Reply #7 on: June 28, 2016, 07:16:20 PM »
What a horrible fucking senseless tragedy. Absolutely heartbreaking. Angers and saddens me. This reinforces my opinion that inflatable pfds are not very helpful. I think that by the time most people realize they need a pfd they are no longer in a good staye to deploy one, and have probably already wasted a lot of enery and warmth.  Or maybe they have compmetely forgotten that it is there and just dont think to deploy it. I imagine that to be able to deploy one in an emergency with adverse conditions and psychological panic, you probably have to have practiced it regularly in training. Nobody practices with their inflatable pfd.  Maybe the ones that hang around your neck are more likely to be remembered and are easier to deploy. Has anyone heard of someone deploying a waist belt pfd and being saved by it? 

Kaihoe

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Re: Another inland SUP death
« Reply #8 on: June 28, 2016, 07:37:49 PM »
Yeah I was thinking about how sensible inflatables PFDs are on our downwinder on sunday.

One of us was wearing a surfski pfd, hi-vis and just plain works when you hit the water. Unlike my inflatable which I have had come off before!! Let alone trying to deploy if in a situation where I've lost the board

PonoBill

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Re: Another inland SUP death
« Reply #9 on: June 28, 2016, 08:53:22 PM »
PFDs can make it harder to get back on the board. I bought a Vaikobi pfd that I like pretty well, not super floaty, basically designed to help swimmers. But when I fall in with it, it rides up a bit, and getting back on the board is a bit harder. I can see it being a real problem for somone not used to managing this kind of situation.

People panic when they get into a bad situation. You'd think it would be easy to just lay down and hand onto the board, but some people struggle with this. They fall in, can't get back on right way, struggle with their gear, wind up losing their board. No real solutions. The more people that are using SUPs, the situations like this will happen.
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pdxmike

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Re: Another inland SUP death
« Reply #10 on: June 28, 2016, 10:47:38 PM »
What a horrible fucking senseless tragedy. Absolutely heartbreaking. Angers and saddens me. This reinforces my opinion that inflatable pfds are not very helpful. I think that by the time most people realize they need a pfd they are no longer in a good staye to deploy one, and have probably already wasted a lot of enery and warmth.  Or maybe they have compmetely forgotten that it is there and just dont think to deploy it. I imagine that to be able to deploy one in an emergency with adverse conditions and psychological panic, you probably have to have practiced it regularly in training. Nobody practices with their inflatable pfd.  Maybe the ones that hang around your neck are more likely to be remembered and are easier to deploy. Has anyone heard of someone deploying a waist belt pfd and being saved by it?
I think inflatable pfds have their place, but it's an odd place.  It wouldn't surprise me if nobody, or hardly anybody, has ever been saved by deploying one.  But I think that has less to do with the pfds than with the people wearing them.

The first group of wearers are people like the ones here, and all the experienced paddlers I know.  They're skilled paddlers who are dressed correctly, can swim, wear leashes, aren't out in conditions they can't handle, etc.  They're wearing the inflatable to avoid tickets and for the extra safety for the 1 in a thousand chance they'll need it, but they almost never would be in a situation where they'd deploy one, and if they did, they'd come out fine and nobody would ever hear about it.  I'd bet this group represents 99% of inflatable wearers.

The other 1% of inflatable pfd wearers are the few inexperienced people who for some reason are wearing inflatables, since they're so expensive.  The Lake Washington victim of a few years ago had one because the rental place was one of the only I've ever heard that offered inflatable pfds.  These people shouldn't be wearing them because they can't swim well, and have no other water skills.  They get in trouble, panic and drown before they even remember to pull the tab. We hear about them because they drown.

The other 99% of inexperienced people who wear pfds wear standard ones, because they're cheap and available (the pfds).  They get in trouble, and pfds save them.  It happens lots because it's a huge group of people that manages to get in trouble a lot.  (The other group that wears standard pfds are experienced people using them in harsh conditions, where they may need them.)

So I think the bottom line is that inflatable pfds don't save many lives because 99% of their wearers don't need them, and the 1% who do aren't able to open them when they need them.  Standard pfds do save lives because they're worn by people who need them, and they don' t need deploying.

The next question would be if many more lives would be saved if everyone who wore pfds wore standard ones.  I'd say no, since so few inflatable wearers ever need their pfds.  They'd just be wearing a bulky one they don't need instead of an inflatable one they don't need.
« Last Edit: June 28, 2016, 10:52:56 PM by pdxmike »

Kaihoe

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Re: Another inland SUP death
« Reply #11 on: June 28, 2016, 11:16:26 PM »
PDX totally agree.

I've just been musing on how useful that damn thing around around my waist would be in that 1 in thousand situation.

oceanAddict

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Re: Another inland SUP death
« Reply #12 on: June 29, 2016, 06:26:25 AM »
Sad story indeed as all previous stories. Unfortunately the mass media wont pick this topic up until statistic become very noticeable or someone famous get into troubles. It happened before - with wearing helmets while skiing. I ski in Canada every year and it was amazing to see that after Natasha Richardson passing the number of people wearing helmets  tripled in one year. 
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Easy Rider

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Re: Another inland SUP death
« Reply #13 on: July 05, 2016, 10:10:24 AM »
Unfortunately another person has drowned. 
No leash or pfd worn. 

http://globalnews.ca/news/2801125/man-pulled-from-skaha-lake-in-penticton/
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Quickbeam

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Re: Another inland SUP death
« Reply #14 on: July 05, 2016, 10:43:45 AM »
Wow, this is getting crazy. Just too many people dying in our sport.

I also found a number of the comments on inflatable PFD’s interesting. Until this year I had always used a waist belt, inflatable PFD. I also always use a leash. I thought I’d be fine with the waist belt PFD as I’m pretty good in the water and I thought if I got in trouble I was a good enough swimmer to keep myself afloat until I got the waist belt inflated.

Then at the start of this year I was out with a friend and we swapped boards for a while. I wasn’t used to his board and took a tumble off it. Not a big deal, except that the board flipped in such a way that it came down perpendicular to the water and just at that moment I landed hard on the rail, on my ribs. It very nearly knocked me out. Kind of scared me actually as I was gasping for air and certainly in no condition at that moment to be trying to concentrate on inflating a PFD. And if I would have been rendered unconscious I could have been in real trouble. Everything turned out O.K., but since then I’ve been wearing my regular PFD. Have to admit part of that is because my ribs are still sore and the PFD is serving to protect them. I think however, that I will keep wearing it even after my ribs are healed. And while you don’t get the same sense of freedom you have with a waist belt PFD, it really isn’t all that uncomfortable to wear. Can be a little warm to wear in the hot weather, but still, not all that bad.
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