The question to ask is not "How long until I begin suffering hypothermia?" Nor is it "how the hell did I end up upside down?" The question to ask is "now that I'm upside down in the freakin' ocean, how long is it going to be before I make my first bad decision?" The goal is to be back upright in your kayak before making that decision. And the reason for a paddle partner is so that when you make that stupid/bad decision, you've got someone to tell you you're an idiot.
Though on those days you might be paddling out to James Island solo in some pretty heavy chop that you're really not ready for, sometimes it's good to be alone with your stupid decision....
It seems to me that if you're upside down in the "freakin' ocean," you've already made your first bad decision!
ReplyDeleteBeing upside down isn't always a decision. Sometimes it's just a physical reality..like turning to look behind you in a new boat on a lake with windblown chop. Then being upside down is just a confluence of events. A bad decision is to move out of a comparitively sheltered cove into a very much not sheltered straight. that's when a lack of experience turns a decision bad...
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