Bailing

Spring 2007

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
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by Paula Johanson

When it’s time to bail, you better know where you’re going and who’s going with you.

If you think bailing means just one thing—scooping water out of your boat—think again. Bailing also means backing out of something you just don’t want to do, as in: “Guys, I know you want to go to that island today, but I’m going to have to bail on that.”

Baynes Channel is in my Victoria paddle group’s home waters. We’ve looked at it from the shoreline and on the water, from the north and from the west. We’ve measured it on charts and read tide and current listings. The first half-dozen times we paddled in that area, we looked across to Chatham and Discovery Islands, knowing that kayakers regularly go there. We resolved that we would cross the channel, together, one day soon.

Last February there were five of us off the light at Cadboro Point. The weather was fabulous—was this the day to cross the channel? Three of us wanted to dare the mid-strength current, but one wouldn’t try it in an unfamiliar, borrowed kayak, and another just wasn’t ready to try it at all. It took only a few moments to agree to split our group and meet later back where we had launched. Two paddlers went back early, while the other three crossed and came back. They thoroughly enjoyed the trip and running the current in a small channel of Chatham, where one paddler flipped and recovered without mishap.

Kayaking safely is not just a matter of planning ahead, reading charts and checking the weather forecast. Being prepared is the first step. Being observant of water and weather conditions and your own strength and skills is another. But being willing to back out of a situation before or just as a problem is starting to develop, well, that’s a safety step that’s hard to tick off on your checklist.

Comfort levels are different for each paddler and each outing. There were four of us out in the same place later that year, on a foggy morning during a zero tide. Everything looked different as shoreline rocks loomed over us, and we wondered when the current would pick up. Anyone who drifted even twenty-five metres offshore would lose sight of land. I was paddling our slowest kayak, a small inflatable. “I’ve got the willies,” I said suddenly to my friend John in the closest boat. “I’m not freaked yet, but I’ve got the willies.”

“Right,” John said. “Can you go into that little bay there at the light, and wait? I’ll go get the other two.” Instead of trying to give me the confidence to go on that his muscles gave him, he turned the homeward leg of the outing into towing practice, with a short towline on my inflatable. There were pauses for taking photographs as the fog swirled. And the next week, everyone carried a compass.

We laughed at that mutual, last minute safety decision, but we didn’t laugh the next time someone turned back before crossing the current that can run like a river through Baynes Channel—it was the right decision for that paddler at that time. Several members of our paddle group made the crossing a couple of times before the sunny winter day when my partner coaxed me to try it. The current was absolutely slack and I enjoyed every minute of it, with growing confidence.

The next time my partner and I made the crossing, we picnicked on Discovery Island, seeing seals and a freighter and an eagle. The barest of ripples disturbed the glassy calm. We were most of the way back, about three hundred metres off Jemmy Jones Island, when some swells came up from behind and to one side of us.

I’ve paddled much rougher waves in wind and rain, but by the time the third swell rocked my boat, my sense of balance was completely scrambled. My head reeled; I wailed and babbled. I was about to flip and writhe like an eel.

My partner had been paddling beside or just ahead of me. But as the first swell reached us he fell back to my stern. I’m hard of hearing and he wanted his voice to carry to me. “Turn your bow into the swells,” he said. “We can go that way till they pass. It’s the wake of that freighter we saw.” And in a few moments I recovered my aplomb.

It’ll be a good day when our paddle group makes that crossing together. Even though some local kayakers go out alone, I know I can only do such outings as part of a group. Oh, I go alone along the sheltered shoreline, but no farther than I could swim if my head spins again. Safety isn’t just being prepared and being capable, it’s also being willing to bail out of something that’s not going right.