Cold Water Rowing
Alexander Lindsay
this account of a nearly catastrophic event on the Potomac River. Nick
Holland is an extremely able oarsmen who I know well.
http://www.potomacstar.com/2010/01/05/a-safety-lesson-learned-the-hard-way/
Alexander Lindsay
Carl Douglas
Potomac Boat Club has a well-deserved reputation for safety awareness.
It is perfectly in keeping with that reputation that is publishes Nick
Holland's very clear report on his "adventure". The account is simple.
It conveys a wealth of good information.
Particularly valuable in this account (IMO) are:
1. Its reference to Jane Blockley's document on Cold Water Immersion:
http://www.leoblockley.org.uk/dl-hypothermia.asp?format=pdf
2. The rational way that Holland approaches his problem, focussing
calmly on the need, in those cold conditions, to get home as soon & as
dry as possible, achieved by good luck but also by reacting wisely & in
good time as, progressively, his situation deteriorates.
3. His final timely resort to surf paddling - what we here have termed
"straddle & paddle" - which eventually got him the last part of his way
home without swimming.
4. Stressing the value of wearing suitable cold-weather kit & the
desirability of PFD or wetsuit.
5. The reminder that your needless death (if you broke rules or went
ill-equipped for what might be around the corner), can cause others a
heap of misery.
It says he wrote that as a penance for rule-breaking. As both warning &
advice it was solid gold.
Thanks -
Carl
--
Carl Douglas Racing Shells -
Fine Small-Boats/AeRoWing Low-drag Riggers/Advanced Accessories
Write: Harris Boatyard, Laleham Reach, Chertsey KT16 8RP, UK
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URLs: www.carldouglas.co.uk (boats) & www.aerowing.co.uk (riggers)
Mike Sullivan
"Alexander Lindsay" <atli...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:ZPadnQ7dC7qyb_TW...@bt.com...
wow! Kudos to Nick for an excellent and useful read. He was lucky not
to have fallen in in the collision, but very smart and cool about his
problem solving.
It was apparent to me that he was knowledgeable about the cold water threat,
and what his abilities and choices were.
My one quibble is that while I agree with him that a wetsuit would have made
him
safer to cold water immersion, I've never found them practical for rowing
in
my testing. They just get too hot. I've tried it in temps in the low 40
f, and
while ok to begin with, once I start working I get way overheated. This
was
just in a spring suit (a 3-2 shortie).
In a surfski, it seems to be more comfortable because I tend to splash a
lot
when I paddle, and end up wet overall.
carolinetu
ignore it, especially those who think they are experienced (see
separate thread).
As part of our capsize drill I teach people how to do a "buddy
rescue". A single has enough buoyancy to keep two people afloat, and
someone sculling with a "passenger" will make better headway than
straddling and paddling.
However, in the circumstances, it sounds as though Nick did everything
right.
Caroline
zeke_hoskin
wrote:
> Those concerned about safety when out on cold water might be interested in
> this account of a nearly catastrophic event on the Potomac River. Nick
> Holland is an extremely able oarsmen who I know well.
>
>
> Alexander Lindsay
I don't understand why his single went so low in the water. No
flotation bags? I realize that *real* racing singles don't have low-
volume cockpits and self-bailers, but I thought I'd understood they
remained rowable when swamped.
And dry suits aren't too hot to row in. Pricey, though . . . //Zeke
Hoskin
Alexander Lindsay
"zeke_hoskin" <ze...@zekehoskin.com> wrote in message
news:08f2a580-57ed-47ea...@u15g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
I'm pretty sure that when he hit the log it made a hole in the shell and the
front part of the boat filled up. In a racing single the bouyancy comes
almost entirely from the end compartments. They are easily rowable when
swamped, because there is so much bouyancy and the "cockpit" is so small.
But when half your bouyancy is punctured, you are in trouble.
Alexander
Carl Douglas
And the bow compartment is much more than 50% of the total sealed buoyancy.
Cheers -
Henning Lippke
> As part of our capsize drill I teach people how to do a "buddy
> rescue". A single has enough buoyancy to keep two people afloat, and
> someone sculling with a "passenger" will make better headway than
> straddling and paddling.
I thought I put some pictures in. What to do after this:
http://www.my-boathouse.com/upload/self_rescue/Skiff2009%20084.JPG
?
"Buddy rescue" demonstrated (best option, IMO):
http://www.my-boathouse.com/upload/self_rescue/Skiff2009%20058.JPG
You can see me lying completely relaxed, arms over the riggers to stop
any chance of sliding into the water.
After a few seconds, the boat sinks some more as the footwell fills up:
http://www.my-boathouse.com/upload/self_rescue/Skiff2009%20067.JPG
Still quite pleasant to lie there, almost no risk of sliding back into
the water.
The rower does actually feel not much of the passenger lying there, of
course the boat reacts much harder to input, but is as easy to balance
as usual.
"Straddle & paddle" is more work:
http://www.my-boathouse.com/upload/self_rescue/Skiff2009%20069.JPG
and is much less stable, ie the chance to slide back into the water is
higher.
And finally a re-entering sequence (down-sized to load quicker):
First, get hold of the oars and prepare the re-entry. First get the oar
next to you:
http://www.my-boathouse.com/upload/self_rescue/Skiff2009%20096.JPG
To get the opposite oar, you may need to swing your legs below the boat
and kick the loom away to reach the handle:
http://www.my-boathouse.com/upload/self_rescue/Skiff2009%20099.JPG
That is the most difficult part. There is no guarantee that this will
succeed in the first attempt, and it takes a lot of engergy to recover
the oar (and keep the other one in place).
Once oars are in place, hold the handles down:
http://www.my-boathouse.com/upload/self_rescue/Skiff2009%20103.JPG
As you can see, you can put some weight on the boat and lift yourself a
few cm out of the water already.
Next, climb onto the seat deck.
http://www.my-boathouse.com/upload/self_rescue/Skiff2009%20105.JPG
The left hand is this case grabs the saxboard from *the top*, not from
below. Make sure that the boat is not banking too much when starting the
re-entry here.
Right afterwards, turn yourself round and sit on the seat deck:
http://www.my-boathouse.com/upload/self_rescue/Skiff2009%20106.JPG
And immediately lift the handles to righten the boat:
http://www.my-boathouse.com/upload/self_rescue/Skiff2009%20108.JPG
Now relax for a couple of seconds, move your weight over the centerline
before the final step:
http://www.my-boathouse.com/upload/self_rescue/Skiff2009%20110.JPG
Put one leg on the stretcher (or on the other side into the water) and
hop on the seat.
There are higher resolutions available if needed.
Mike Sullivan
One thing I have a problem with when I teach this is to describe to them how
to turn sideways on the seat deck if they've fallen in my accident.
Some masters people can do what you show in an open water boat
like an Aero, but are unable to do so in a single. For them, I show
them how to pull up and kick a leg over and straddle. You don't have
to be able to get yourself quite so high out of water on the lunge.
Mike
"Henning Lippke" <use...@my-boathouse.com> wrote in message
news:7t0uei...@mid.individual.net...
Charles Carroll
Nick Holland must be commended for having shown remarkable presence of mind.
Nevertheless there are two points I don't quite understand.
What happened to the pfd? Did he have one with him and just not put it on?
Or did he not have one in his boat?
And I do not get this shell buoyancy issue at all. Do all shells eventually
sink when a big hole is made in the hull?
I ask because we had a famous incident at the Club a few years before I
started sculling. A young woman rowing a Maas Flyweight crossed paths with
some kids who were taking sailing lessons. The kids ended up taking about
two and a half feet of the bow off the Flyweight. But the young woman was
able to row it back to the Club with very little trouble.
This morning David told me that this was because Maas Flyweights are built
with bags of Styrofoam balls fitted into their compartments.
Assuming everything I have said is correct, it seems to me two more lessons
can be drawn from this incident.
First, don't go out in dangerous water without a pfd.
Second, don't go out in dangerous water without reliable equipment.
Cordially,
Charles
Charles Carroll
I look at that blade whacking against Carl's hull, and all I can think is
ouch!
Cordially,
Charles
zeke_hoskin
wrote:
> "zeke_hoskin" <z...@zekehoskin.com> wrote in message
Sorry. I didn't make myself clear. Of course when you puncture the
skin of a shell, it leaks.
In both ends of my single are a pair of buoyancy bags, because the
Maas people
correctly assume that sooner or later somebody will hit something.
I've never had a
chance to look in the ends of anybody else's boat, but assuming that a
fragile
plastic toy will never sustain a puncture comes somewhere between
fatuous optimism
and criminal negligence.
I once raced an Aero to see whether I wanted it or a 24. The drainplug
was missing and
I never noticed. The boat shipped a whole lot of water in the course
of twelve miles, and
at the end it rowed . . . just . . . fine. Slow, but I assumed that
was just me.//Zeke
Carl Douglas
Charles -
In partial response to you & to Zeke, there is a basic difference in
philosophy between largely-recreational craft & racing boats.
The former are for general use by folk who are not assumed to know much
about them & have an entitlement to go out in their own way & still be
kept as safe as can reasonably be - like all those zillions of private
cars (don't mention stuck pedals, anyone!) - & ought to incorporate
safety features to cover all the most plausible causes of danger.
Filling their ends with bags of buoyant material makes plenty of sense.
The latter are supposedly designed and built for one purpose - for
racing - & that's how they evolved. This means the prime objective is
performance, with only those safety features incorporated which do not
compromise performance or address blatantly unacceptable dangers.
We've had many discussions here of safety features which ought to be in
every racing boat, but always with the tacit understanding that these do
not & should not compromise performance. The anger felt by some of us
over dunderhead official obstruction has been warranted always by the
simple fact that, e.g., making racing shells more inherently buoyant
does nothing to increase weight or impair performance, in fact it
improves performance by limiting the amount of water a shell can take on
& by controlling the energetically wasteful internal flows of what water
the boat does retain. Unfortunately, administrators rarely ascend the
greasy poles of high office within NGBs on the records for safety
management, intellect or altruism....
If you do add bagged flotation materials, you will increase boat weight.
That is acceptable & may be deemed proper for rec boats. With racing
craft you do need to accept compromises based on the boat's prime
purpose & the presumed better watermanship of racing rowers (which
presumption tends sometimes, due to the poor standard of safety
management in many parts of this sport, to be the Achilles' heel).
In another thread I pointed out that the UK's supposedly premier water
safety group was clueless about all aspects of boat safety, & that their
ignorance included a failure even to read the EU's Recreational Crafts
Directive. For goods for use in the EU, something called CE marking is
generally required, to show that an item conforms to agreed standards of
safety & manufacture. Even in a hide-bound bureaucracy such as the EU,
it is still recognised that racing boats are a special case which ought
to be exempt from the CE requirement, & I think that is right. However,
that exemption remains open to legitimate challenge while NGBs such as
British Rowing continue to administer rowing safety in such a plainly
ill-informed & non-inclusive way, keeping the experts on the outside &
in purdah while the ignorant stay in charge & continue to invent
ignorant rules & advice.
Anyway, the upshot is that competition rowing shells are somewhat
vulnerable to the consequences of perforation, & the more so due to the
lack of good training of rowers on the management of damaged shells.
Thus if the bow of a single is holed, it is vulnerable but, unless the
bows were cut off (which presupposes a major crunch), the boat is likely
to remain a fit float for its user. The limitations do still need to be
understood. If you have a hole below waterline, some water will enter.
However, if you keep still that entry will cease when the internal
water level reaches the upper limit of the hole, leaving a lot of
trapped air to support you & allow you to get home - if the vent hatch
&/or bungs remain reasonably sealed. Where Nick Holland erred was in
assuming he could scull his boat back as if it were not holed (he may
not have appreciated the extent of the damage), because the combination
of good boat speed & rowing's surging motion will slosh the water & air
around inside the boat, each surge expelling a bit more air & admitting
yet more water. His later change to backing down made better sense in
those conditions, but came a bit late, especially as the more water
there was in the bow the more the boat must tilt. When things got worse
still, he still had the enclosed volume of his aft deck & used it
wisely. But getting damaged boats back home is not something that
rowing gives any thought to. And a similarly damaged eight lacking
adequate inbuilt enclosed compartments can be a major hazard to its users.
I should add that the shape of rowing shells does allow them to glance
off pretty threatening objects with minimal damage & unperforated. Most
bow breakages result for major boat-on-boat impacts, where we'd like to
think (probably wrongly) that help is at hand. Unfortunately the lack
of any meaningful reporting & recording system means we have no good
idea of the frequency of such incidents or their outcomes. However, my
professional experience is that well-built singles & doubles do stand up
very well to seemingly horrendous impacts & do still get their users
safely home - another topic for another time.
HTH
Henning Lippke
> I look at that blade whacking against Carl's hull, and all I can think
> is ouch!
It does make a painful noise, but leaves almost no marks.
At that time the current refurbishment was already planned. That made
the whole thing easier.
Otherwise I skip the capsizing and just practice the re-entry. You can
see a towel as a protection on the saxboard.
Charles Carroll
I did not seriously think that you would let anything happen to that
beautiful shell.
I also forgot to mention how much I admire the photograph. From other photos
I have seen of yours I have to say that you do take some really fine
pictures. I still remember the photos of sculling Christmas day.
Warmest regards,
Charles
RobP
recovery pictures.
Comments and questions based on my own experience:
1. I follow the "every gram counts" logic of not filling the front and
rear compartments of racing singles with buoyant material. It would
be interesting to know, however, how much that material would actually
weigh. Maybe less than a full water bottle, or the same as the weight
of a speed coach and its wiring? My guess is that there are very few
scullers for whom that sort of marginal weight change will have any
impact on boat speed. In addition, for any competitive sculler, time
spent training will far exceed time spent racing. So I suspect that a
collision (with another boat, a log etc) is far more likely to happen
during training time. But training is also more likely to be done
alone and unsupported by safety boats. If that is right then, for
myself, I don't see that there is a valid speed-safety tradeoff to be
made by not adding buoyant material to a racing single. I should add
two things. First, I am most definitely not a particularly fast
sculler - so maybe I just don't have a "racing mindset". Second, the
"a lighter boat would make us go faster" argument is a pet annoyance
of mine - I have always taken the rather Luddite view that (for most
club level crews), training more, looking after the boat better, and
losing few kilos of fat each would have a greater effect on boat
speed. A cost effective (but not popular) view, developed during a
stint as club treasurer...
2. Is there any established practice in southern-UK clubs, of
requiring or recommending that rowers and scullers wear or carry
PFDs? Logic and evidence suggest that there ought to be: winter water
temperatures are well below 10 deg C and some of us scull on wide
bodies of water where, absent risk management - i.e. staying close to
shore - self recovery or assisted recovery, severe boat damage or
capsize would result in prolonged (and potentially fatal) immersion.
My limited experience is that there is no such established practice -
its a matter of individual choice, and the choice is generally
against.
3. Some time ago I started a thread about PFDs for rowing in cold
water conditions. I asked whether anyone had any experience of trying
to row in and achieve a self-recovery from a capsize (as per Henning's
pictures) wearing a fully inflated PFD. As I recall a) no-one
reported any direct experience of self-recovery wearing a PFD; b)
North American participants offered generally helpful comments about
different types of PFD and how much / little they impeded normal
rowing (suggesting that the practice there favours PFDs in a way that
Southern-UK practice does not); and c) one or two comments suggesting
that if I was that worried about cold water I should tie empty plastic
milk bottles to my riggers...
Rob
Jake
>
> 1. I follow the "every gram counts" logic of not filling the front and
> rear compartments of racing singles with buoyant material. It would
> be interesting to know, however, how much that material would actually
> weigh. Maybe less than a full water bottle, or the same as the weight
> of a speed coach and its wiring?
I think that as Carl suggests, if there was enough data kept on the
nature of rowing shell impact damage it would be easier to design
around it. I have sunk twice in singles due to damage, one the usual
bow damage from hitting an uncharted submerged drifting pontoon and
once perforating the rear hull of a stampfli cedar single in odd
circumstances in a boat which was frankly ridiculously fragile so a
bit of an anomoly. If as I suspect the majority of these incidents are
concentrated at the bow of the boat from hitting submerged objects
(such as drifting logs) a sacrificial bow compartment could easily be
incorporated in the manufacture of most boats adding little to the
cost and certainly less than the weight of even a quarter full water
bottle. This is simply a bulkhead the full height of the boat placed
about a foot back from the bow as used in many racing yachts. It means
you can completely total the cutwater of the boat but lose negligible
bouyancy and remain rowable providing you've not hit it hard enough to
damage it aft of the bulkhead.
To repair the single I had the bow accident with, I had to seperate
the first couple of feet of hull and deck and gently fold the carbon
deck up to get hand access inside the hull inside the bow anyway. I
had a spare piece of offcut foam laminate with carbon each side so it
added about an hour to my total repair time to jigsaw it to size,
butter it up and epoxy it in as an airtight bulkhead about 6 inches
back from the bow. As it was such a small bulkhead quite close to the
bow it only cost a few grammes of weight. A bulkhead out of 3mm
plywood would do the job just as well with not much more weight and
negligible cost, though most manufacturers would find that they would
daily throw away offcuts of carbon/foam/carbon flat laminate bigger
than the material required for such a bow bulkhead, as they tend to
lay up big sheets of the stuff and saw it up to make the internal
structural members and bulkheads out of.
Now I can hit things in the water very hard with no fear of losing
bouyancy, though despite a few big impacts the actual sacraficial bow
compartment has not yet been put to the test as really not wishing to
sink again I also backed up my bow repair with a fist full of west
epoxy, 404 filler and a rolled up tampon of carbon tape all faired
into the hull inside so the first inch and a half of my hull is now
backed up inside with a hammerhead of solid carbon/ epoxy. Small
chunks of this have been knocked off at various stages, once notably
when a bungee failed and the front of the boat came off the car
roofrack and bounced off the road a couple of times before I brought
it to a stop. Once again, it's so thin up that end, such reinforcement
uses little material so costs little in terms of time, materials and
weight, but I wouldn't have bothered with all of this if I didn't have
the bow canvas off it anyway, so it's more suitable to do this stuff
at the manufacturing stage.
I'd be interested to hear how much Carl would reckon incorporating
such a bulkhead would increase the cost and weight of a boat, though
it would only be a hypothetical question as his boats' atypically
gradual bow profile mean they probably mount most underwater
obstructions, are stronger than most and there is only strong heresay
rather than hard data to say that most on water sinking impacts are
concentrated in the first foot or so of boat.
Carl Douglas
That's an excellent set of questions, Rob! Maybe the following will add
a couple of lumps of factual fat to your fire?
1. Weight of added flotation material.
The lightest stuff you might install under a bow deck would be
~40kg/m^3. Volume under the bow deck of a 1x might be ~.1m^3 (a
ball-park figure only). So that'd be ~4kg of foam, providing ~100kg of
support gross, or 96kg net. That'd raise a 14kg (= minimum weight) boat
to 18kg, a weight increase of nearly 30%.
2. Performance penalty vs boat weight.
This is the topic which generates one of the biggest load of tosh in our
sport - because we love to spout but hate to engage our brains. Popular
fiction, based on nothing technical, has it that lighter must equate to
faster. And that fiction has been fed by the neurotic official
insistence, reinforced by quite a few disqualifications, that boats'
weights should not be below the FISA minima. If boats moved at constant
velocity this might make sense (but not a lot of sense even then!),
since less mass means reduced displacement & wetted surface. But rowing
is a surging action, driven partly by the relative movements between a
large mass (you) & a much smaller mass (the boat), so boat speeds
fluctuate by +/- 20% or more in each stroke cycle.
Speed fluctuation increases hull drag above what it'd be at constant
boat speed. Increasing the boat weight increases boat-to-crew mass
ratio, which reduces boat speed cycling. To check what this means in
practice, I've actually done some mathematical analyses. I found, by
varying boat mass, that, far from drag reducing all the way down to zero
boat mass, there's always a minimum boat mass below which the increasing
boat speed oscillation starts to increase its drag. In my analyses, I
found a plateau of minimum total drag for a boat mass around 12-15kg,
with drag progressively increasing on both sides of that range.
Yes, I agree that less lard on the rowers is a better aid to performance
than any thing you might even imagine gaining from a bit off the weight
of boat (&/or cox). Slimmer athletes are more flexible, displace less
water & shunt the boat around a lot less too. Kkeeping the boat clean &
shiny improves crew performance simply by enhancing confidence & pride.
And changing worn wheels, slides (in both of which departments my firm
has excellent products!), & shoes & gates, & checking pitches, all
matter far more than the odd few % on boat weight (even supposing weight
even mattered at all).
But returning to the Potomac incident:
In reality a sculler so badly perforating their boat as to be unable to
get back home or to a safe shore is very much a rarity. And if the
boat's construction is well-designed & executed, it is even less likely.
We can, of course, cater for every eventuality however improbable, but
stuffing expanded foam under the covers would not be my choice.
In marine construction it is good practice to provide subdivision of
buoyancy, such that the loss of one, or some, of that buoyant capacity
does not sink the boat. If there were the demand for it, it would be
very easy, & virtually without weight penalty, to provide a transverse
sealed bulkhead to divide in 2 the single volume that is the norm for
about the first half of the length of any single scull. And you could,
of course, do the same for all the other boat classes.
Cheers -
Carl Douglas
Hey! While I was writing my epistle, I now see that Jake was doing &
thinking exactly the same.
Hope I gave a satisfactory answer, Jake?
Jake
> about a foot back from the bow as used in many racing yachts. It means
> you can completely total the cutwater of the boat but lose negligible
> bouyancy and remain rowable providing you've not hit it hard enough to
> damage it aft of the bulkhead.
>
full of sleeping whales (they sleep on the surface) and lost shipping
containers which often float level with the sea surface. Too many
racing yachts were being lost especially at night due to relatively
minor frontal damage. in larger boats often the whole bow cabin is
emergency sacrificial bouyancy in which case the door into it is
beefier than normal with big pressure latches on all sides.
>
> I'd be interested to hear how much Carl would reckon incorporating
> such a bulkhead would increase the cost and weight of a boat, though
> it would only be a hypothetical question as his boats' atypically
> gradual bow profile mean they probably mount most underwater
> obstructions, are stronger than most and there is only strong heresay
> rather than hard data to say that most on water sinking impacts are
> concentrated in the first foot or so of boat.
I also should have mentioned that building boats with aramid (Kevlar)
rather than the more usual carbon further reduces the chances of
puncture type damage to very unlikely as almost regardless of the rest
of the laminate kevlar will keep its integrity better than almost any
other material known to man. I had a kevlar/ epoxy slalom canoe when I
was younger and bounced off many sharp rocks in it . Though it weeped
in water at the bottom where all the gel coat and epoxy had been
scraped off it and craked off by impacts, it remained canoe shaped and
largely bouyant to the end even though in places it was the kevlar
fabric on its own keeping the boat together.
Henning Lippke
Charles -
> I also forgot to mention how much I admire the photograph. From other
> photos I have seen of yours I have to say that you do take some really
> fine pictures.
The pictures were not taken by me - I was starring the scenes.
As an aside: the whole week-end where these pics were made was a huge
success. Two days for adult beginners to learn to scull in racing
singles after a few weeks in touring (gig) boats. In 2009 it was for the
second time and I had help from two other guys. I had very clean ideas
of how I wanted the beginners to be teached. So I've written some less
useful sentences together, just giving keywords and a rough programme.
While the two guys were instructing the beginners I took care of some of
the more advanced scullers that joined the week-end. And whenever we
were close to the scene, I made a short visit to the beginners arena and
were very pleased to see the guys doing exactly what I wanted them to do
- but in their own words, in their own style.
You see, it often just needs a few minutes thinking and preparing and
the outcome can't really fail. The pictures where done in a similar way.
We exchanged a few words in advance about how and what will happen, and
it gave good results. The pictures were never meant to be for further
instructions, just to have something to remember the event.
Dave Sill
>
> 1. Weight of added flotation material.
> The lightest stuff you might install under a bow deck would be
> ~40kg/m^3. Volume under the bow deck of a 1x might be ~.1m^3 (a
> ball-park figure only). So that'd be ~4kg of foam, providing ~100kg of
> support gross, or 96kg net. That'd raise a 14kg (= minimum weight) boat
> to 18kg, a weight increase of nearly 30%.
That seems awfully high. Googling a bit, I see marine polyurethane foam
listed at 2 lb/ft^3, or 32 kg/m^3. Elsewhere I see that 0.5 lb/ft^2
polyurethane foam is available. That'd drop the weight penalty to
negligible.
Also, how about using a rubber bladder instead of rigid foam?
-Dave
Carl Douglas
Or you can try Aerogel, at about 5kg/m^3, but it's fairly pricey. I'm
sure you're right, however I was trying to restrict myself to readily
available materials and ball-park figures. I doubt you'll foam in place
at 8kg/m^3, so my 40kg/m^3 was a reasonable value.
Rubber lining would work, but would have to be blown in situ & be sure
to stay stuck. And it'd need not to split when the hull is damaged. So
I doubt it'll work.
As Jake says, Kevlar fabric does a very fine job of puncture resistance.
We use Kevlar within our laminates & find the result is very
puncture-proof. Where bows have, on a couple of occasions, been crushed
by severe impact, even then they've retained their get-you-home ability.
I think an intermediate bulkhead in the bow would do it all, by
subdividing the volume of the more vulnerable & largest end. But we
have yet to have a boat crushed or holed to unscullability.
Cheers -
carl
Henning Lippke
> One thing I have a problem with when I teach this is to describe to them how
> to turn sideways on the seat deck if they've fallen in my accident.
Here's a quick one:
http://www.row2k.com/video/view.cfm?vid=8906
Charles Carroll
Dan Gorriaran's very relaxed and unhurried. Both are admirable attributes
and lend themselves well to the motions required to recover from a capsize.
But have you ever capsized in water so flat?
How do you keep yourself relaxed and unhurried in heavy chop and wind, or 1
meter tall rolling waves, or when the choice is to recover in seconds or be
tossed onto sharp rocks?
Cordially,
Charles
Charles Carroll
>
Carl,
I cannot tell you how reassuring it is to read this.
Henning Lippke
> How do you keep yourself relaxed and unhurried in heavy chop and wind,
> or 1 meter tall rolling waves,
For that see the other pictures, where re-entry is not an option one
needs to opt for straddle and paddle or buddy rescue.
> or when the choice is to recover in
> seconds or be tossed onto sharp rocks?
Then better never get even close to that. Sharp rocks and heavy chop and
wind don't look like pleasant conditions to take a racing shell out.
Charles Carroll
Does it make any sense to take a flat water racing shell near sharp rocks,
or out into heavy chop or strong wind, or for that matter into any
unpleasant, dangerous water?
My simple answer is that it makes no sense at all. So aren't you and I of
like mind on this question?
On the other hand, what about those times when we have no choice?
Haven't you had occasions when you find that you have rowed into a mess?
I seem to remember asking you once about the sturdiness of a Carl Douglas
1x. If memory serves me, didn't you answer by describing a row in which it
was every wave over the bow for over an hour?
Calculated risk means that whenever we know we are going to row into
dangerous waters, we try to anticipate these dangers. For example, we dress
in proper clothing, and we take a pfd, and we chose a boat fit for the
purpose to which we are going to put it, namely, that was designed for the
water we are going to row on and whose buoyancy will support us if we
capsize, and we don't go out alone but instead row with companions who can
call for help if we need it, etc. etc. etc.
But are the risks that we anticipate and prepare for the greatest risks we
face?
What about the risks we haven't anticipated - the ones that seem to come out
of nowhere and blindside us? How do we prepare for those risks?
Cordially,
Charles
Carl Douglas
I think the answer to your penultimate question, Charles, is that, if we
are properly informed, we have prepared for the most probable dangers.
To your last question the only fair answer is that we cannot predict the
unpredictable but we can prepare for it. How you cope depends on your
breath of experience & what you have learned from others (including
tales here & elsewhere), how you react under pressure, how resourceful &
adaptable you are, how well you understand the situation into which you
have been thrown.
Risk assessment is all very well, but ticking boxes covers only the
obvious. It doesn't tell you what's around the corner. It doesn't
answer most of the points raised in my previous paragraph. It leaves
the naive person still helpless & hopeless. You can be told how to play
a piano, & may know the names of the notes, but without long practice
you still cannot perform. Only practice makes perfect. And with
practice you also become more adaptable.
Today we stress the rules for safety but shy away from real training.
Partly that's because real training for safety itself carries real risks
- you have to know the feeling of fear to know how to control it. I
sense that people at large have lived more sheltered lives now than in
the past but feel more sure of their self-importance & immortality.
That's a dangerously heady mix. Once you've had & survived a few
scrapes, you start to see that life carries no guarantee of longevity or
lasting quality if its "consumer" does not appreciate its fragility &
has not troubled to learned widely how to better protect it.
Cheers -
Carl
Charles Carroll
It would be madness to encourage people to take risks in rough water.
I say this because when Henning wrote that "sharp rocks and heavy chop and
wind don't look like pleasant conditions to take a racing shell out," I was
afraid I might have opened to door to a serious misunderstanding.
The Sausalito Club routinely offers rough water clinics. But I don't want to
give anyone the wrong impression. While scullers sign up for these clinics
in order to learn and practice the skills they need to row in rough water,
it would be a mistake to think that we are trying to encourage these
scullers to take risks in dangerous water. On the contrary, the purpose of
these clinics is to mitigate risk. Having the skill and confidence to row
rough water may very well save their life one day.
What is it you wrote? "Real training for safety itself carries real risks -
you have to know the feeling of fear to know how to control it." That is
precisely what our clinics are about. It is what we are trying to teach.
And it also happens to be why I sometimes scull your beautiful shell in
risky waters.
So you make my point when you write, "Only practice makes perfect."
My father kept a quotation from Thucydides over his desk. I think he had it
printed and framed when he got his Destroyer. I cannot remember his ever
being without it. Almost every officer who ever served under him commented
on it at one time or another:
"Their want of practice will make them unskillful, and their want of skill
timid. Maritime skill is like skill of other kinds, not a thing to be
cultivated by the way or at chance times." (Thucydides 1.142)
Warmest regards,
Charles