VANCOUVER ISLAND WINDTALK

Hi BWD crowd, I'm going to summarize a series of posts I put on the Squamish Windsports Society pages this spring regarding a very close call and what has been learned re the close call and knife options.

The Close Call

On March 30, 2019, a friend's kite deflated and a combination of him getting lines wrapped around leg, current, cold water, drysuit that let water in, his inability to cut lines due to situation, exhaustion, and then hypothermia coming on, over the course of my trying for ~45 mins to body drag him over to the sand bar meant he just about drowned. He's only around today because I managed to get him up-current of a root ball of an upturned tree lodged in the sand (too deep to touch) and he just, just managed to get a hold of it before going under. He was essentially in full panic mode at this point and could no longer hold on to me and was barely keeping his head above water and I had run out of options. Very, very scary.

Things learned:
1. I screwed up by assuming I could take care of the situation - when I brought my friend's board in right after his kite went down (before I went back out to start body dragging him) I should've asked someone to watch us and make sure we got to safety.
2. When I went in to bring my buddy's board in I left my surfboard there and came back out on his twintip thinking I'd have to think less riding it, but big mistake because I could've put my buddy on the floating surfboard!!
3. An option if someone is desperate for flotation would be to drop one's own kite to them, though this would've left me without a kite.
4. Not all harnesses have hook knives on them, and this is strange and bad.
5. Make sure you know if you have a knife, and where it is. My friend didn't realize he had one.
6. The hook knife from mine (the stock knife on an Ocean Rodeo Session 3) did not work well. Once I had him on the root ball, I had to pull HARD to cut a single line, and I had about 15 tight wraps to work through. Good luck doing this while treading water or worse getting dragged. My harness has only one season and the blade had never before been used and was not corroded. Clearly these knives are not great. I later spoke to Todd at OR and he explained that the knives are the same on most brands and they are not super high quality in large part because the market (i.e., kiters) don't seem to want to pay for good quality knives. Silly kiters... in general I do find the kiting community is not that safety oriented, but much of my outdoor recreation background is from mountain sports in which safety management is a big focus.
7. Hook knives have tiny little loops of webbing on them - good luck managing to get this in your finger in a situation, and even more good luck not dropping it. I have for years put on an extra 6mm loop of cord (with shoe goo over the knot to help keep knotted) so that I actually have something to hold on to (see photo). I believe that if I didn't have that extra loop on my knife that we would have lost it that day. On a previous harness I had a float on the extra cord but in big wipe outs the knife would come out of the harness due to the float (I eventually lost that knife as it floated away after a wipe out in La Ventana, and so I gave up on that idea).
8. The kiting world doesn't take knives and such emergencies seriously.
9. Water velocity at a rivermouth accelerates over sandbars - we were so close to where one can stand up (~15m away) but couldn't quite make it, I presume, because the water velocity was higher there being shallower.

Fortunately, there are other options for knives.

Other knife options that various people have recommended:
- Gerber strap cutter (I bought this): https://www.gerbergear.com/Activity/DEF ... r_22-01943
- Trilobite Eezycut https://eezycut.com/
- https://www.mec.ca/en/product/5004-128/ ... nium-Knife (but I gotta say, having a pointed knife in a chaotic situation seems nutty to me)

I bought the Gerber knife, and I did a couple of things to make the Gerber knife work better for a kiting harness: (1) I've attached a bit of kite line between the Gerber knife and the knife's clip (holster) so that it can't get lost in a wipeout or in a serious event. I taped some back-and-forth loops of line with masking tape and I tuck the loops in behind a strap - they haven't come out yet, and I've tested pulling out on the knife and the masking tape rips easily so that the full line length is available for use. (2) I grinded down the metal pointed top (glass breaker) as I found my wetsuit was catching on it when crunched over. I used a bench grinder.

Hope this is useful to others!

Chris, Squamish, OR Ambassador

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Scary!

Good info. The first and biggest red flag to me would be that someone was going out in a leaky drysuit in near 0 degree water in March. Assume you'll have to swim in, that won't cut it.

I once used a 'common' harness hook knife which was cheap and plastic. When downed in big surf and getting pulled with lines around legs I went to use the knife - the plastic exploded upon first pull and the knife was useless. I got out of the lines by sheer luck.

These are good links! Thanks! I'm buying one.

This is a story that everyone should read and learn from.

nanmoo wrote:Good info. The first and biggest red flag to me would be that someone was going out in a leaky drysuit in near 0 degree water in March. Assume you'll have to swim in, that won't cut it.

The drysuit was in good condition. It seems to have gotten water in during my attempts to body drag my buddy in, including cycling the kite to get momentum.

Just to be clear here... did you take his board in and then go back for him?
How far from shore was he when his kite dropped?
Not trying to find faults just interested

scarlet wrote:Just to be clear here... did you take his board in and then go back for him?
How far from shore was he when his kite dropped?
Not trying to find faults just interested

yes i went in with his board, but left my surfboard there and went back out on his twintip. He was a few hundred meters out when he dropped his kite, and when I was with him dragging him same. At the Squamish spit this is far as most people aren't even looking on the river side, and with noise of wind challenging to get anyone's attention (incidentally when I finally realized we were in deep shit I yelled a bunch and it turns out someone heard me but they were confused as all they saw actually was me and my kite in the air - they couldn't see the deflated kite and my buddy barely above water)

Thanks for the reply.
A frightening experience

I recently bought a replacement drysuit for my old leaking one, mainly for kayaking. Tried it out snorkelling, as it was supposed to be 'dive-able'. It leaked badly immediately - not from leaving a zipper open (that is SO easy to do!) but because I had not been meticulous about smoothing out the latex gaskets. I thought I'd done an OK job, but it leaked like crazy through the neck and one wrist. After cutting a few 'rings' off each gasket to make the suit more comfortable (and easier to get the gaskets flat) I'm hoping its actually more waterproof than before. Will try it out shortly.

Dry suits also have to have adequate insulation layers underneath for prolonged immersion even if they stay dry. Hardly anyone who wears them does this. I think they provide a false sense of security. Wetsuits are more fool - proof.

That is really great info on the knives. I practice feeling for my harness knive from time to time, so if I ever need it there might be some muscle memory working, but I hadn't considered that it might be garbage. The Gerber sounds like a reasonable solution (despite the rust).

I've always wondered, would a pair of Paramedic scissors work well for this situation? Possibly with a float attached.

They're designed to cut just about anything, and are set up so they don't cut skin (no sharp points, flat part to get under clothing)

Too bulky?

Also not a bad idea to also have one with PFD if SUPping. There was a story last week about a woman who died doing SUP Yoga. Turned out it wasn't the yoga, she was highly experienced and trying to help another woman who was having trouble with currents under a bridge. She fell in and the leash caught. The news article didn't explain, but I figure she must have fallen one side of a piling and the board went the other and she was effectively 'dragged' foot first. Not that different from getting legs tangled in lines then relaunching.

Never wear a leash if there is significant current and obstacles on or below the water. The same thing happens a few times each summer in rivers.