Letters to Sea Kayaker
Sea Kayaker Magazine was launched in early 1984, and became the main sea kayaking magazine across the world. The only comparable UK magazine, Sea Paddler, foundered after only a couple of issues, and other publications are club-based.
Sea Kayaker evolved since then, not only in layout and print standards, but also in its content. Early on, the material was aimed at experienced paddlers: later, much of it was intended for entry-level paddlers. That reflected the growing popularity of sea kayaking, and made the magazine a valuable resource for new paddlers, but in my view there ought to have been more material for intermediate and expert paddlers, and more critical thought given to equipment and techniques.
Over the years I had a number of letters published, in response to articles by others. These include ‘Hand pumps’ in June 1999, ‘Pumping through a spray deck hatch’ in the April 2002 issue, and ‘Foot pumps: the elegant solution’ in April 2003 (complete with photographs). All these letters were on topics dealt with elsewhere on this site.
The February 2004 issue contained ‘The Breaking Point: A Trial by Wind on Nevada’s Pyramid Lake’ by Michael Jeneid, a report of an incident which began with a rudder cable breaking. A sidebar by Karin Redmond made some recommendations. I wrote:
In control?
The Editor, Sea Kayaker,
I don’t disagree with Karin Redmond’s ‘Lessons learned’ comments on Michael Jeneid’s incident on Pyramid Lake (February 2004, p 53), but I think she missed a key factor: the poor design of the rudder pedal system.
Any system that puts footrest loads into the rudder cables, instead of directly to the structure of the kayak, is poor design. Yes, sliding pedals may be neat and simple, but they do not provide the rigid platform for proper bracing, indeed, proper paddling style, and when cables break they do not fail safe.
In his editorial Chris Cunningham writes of paddling efficiency, of generating power from leg muscles upwards. That requires rigid footrests. Of the pedals in the Solstice GT, reviewed on page 12, it is noted that they ‘“had some play if one pedal was pushed with the rudder retracted. Pushing both at the same time provided almost rigid bracing, unusually solid for sliding pedals.”’ Sorry, not good enough. There must be no play in either pedal, rudder up or down.
The Loki reviewed in the same issue has the Cascade Designs SmartTrack system, with the rudder controlled by toe pedals, the balls of the feet supported by rigid footrests. Paddling and bracing forces go where they should, directly into the hull, and control loads only go into the rudder cables. The Seaward Kayaks smartRUDDER™ system is similar. If your boat has sliding pedals, replace them with one of these systems or a similar mechanism from another manufacturer. More complex, but you are better able to paddle properly, and a cable failure is much less likely to spoil your day. (Personally, I gave up rudders years ago and use retractable fins: solid footrests always.)
On the same day that Sea Kayaker arrived I also received the January issue of Bay Currents. On page 2 a paddler writes of an incident in which he was dumped out of his boat. After re-entering, ‘...now with the cockpit full of water, which I couldn’t free up my hands to pump, I was trying to wrestle many, many pounds of boat filled with its sloshing water...’ Poor design again.
Cockpits should be designed so that loose water has minimal effects: boats must be easily controllable even when flooded. That means no vacant space in the cockpit. Of the Solstice GT one reviewer wrote “‘...a lot of the volume is in the cockpit. With the bulkhead set at 12in ahead of the foot pegs...’” Volume not just lost to the forward compartment, but available to water to slosh about in and be wrestled with.
Then there is that matter of not being able to pump: just when he needed the pump most he couldn't use it. We’ve been saying for years in Australia that you need to be able to paddle and pump at the same time*. With foot or electric pumps you can do that. Hand-held pumps should be abandoned, not stowed ‘in the cockpit in the space between the seat and the side of the boat [or] on your deck under a bungee’ as Heather Nelson recommends on page 57. (As for that space between seat and hull, it should be filled with buoyancy.)
In another field, events like these two would lead to airworthiness directives mandating modifications to prevent similar incidents. In kayaking we seem to tolerate poor design from manufacturers who appear to concentrate on appearance, minor performance improvements, or even gimmicks. I would suggest that the concentration ought to be on the design of systems that are reliable and perform when things are going wrong. Robust footrests, minimum volume cockpits and hands-free pump systems should be the norm, not the exception. They not only perform better, they are safer.
Perhaps Sea Kayaker’s reviews should report on the ease, or otherwise, with which kayaks can be paddled with their cockpits flooded, and what hands-free pump options the makers offer. A good start would be to publish the volumes of cockpits and compartments.
This letter was lost when the magazine’s e-mail system crashed, and by the time it was retrieved was no longer topical.
The safety article in the December 2004 edition was ‘The Loss of a Novice’ by Charles A Sutherland, who described how a beginning paddler was drowned after panicking following a capsize while practising support strokes. The article prompted Peter Lamont in Scotland to begin work on what became the Capsize intake test. Both Peter and I wrote to Sea Kayaker, and eventually presented the editor, Chris Cunningham, with full details of the test. Below is only one letter from the series, with Chris’s text in colour.
Cockpit intake test
Chris,
Thanks for your reply:
Thank you both for your thoughts on cockpit retention volume (CRV). I have concerns about how such a measurement would relate to circumstances paddlers encounter. The conditions specified for the test require a calm body of water and that would seem to provide a best-case scenario. If actually conditions put more water into the cockpit—waves, cargo, paddler weight—I’d rather have paddlers know what they are more likely to encounter. (Not to mention that I don't have such a body of water handy for conducting such tests. I always have to keep in mind the practicality of any aspect of the review. The process as it is now is already quite labor intensive.)
You’re right, we are testing the ‘best-case scenario’. Boat weight (i.e. the amount of gear on board) and sea state will make a difference, but there has to be some form of baseline measure. As it is, your stability tests do not take accelerations from waves, particularly breaking waves, into account.
A boat designed to take on less water and to drain quickly will do so irrespective of the conditions. I know which I would rather have in wind and wave.
The CRV test would also seem to miss important cockpit configuration issues. A deeply recessed coaming or a bulkhead well aft of the cockpit opening are going to make pre-boarding drainage less effective...
No, we are not missing those issues: on the contrary. We regard them as poor design. Having the bulkhead some distance aft is something we’re trying to eradicate. The modern idea of a third bulkhead and compartment (the so-called ‘day hatch’) is an improvement, because the bulkhead can be close to the seat, even curved, reducing the cockpit volume and making for more secure stowage.
The ratio of flotation volume and floodable volume will also determine whether or not a paddler can climb up on deck without having the cockpit take on more water. As I’ve mentioned in earlier email, I think that figure could be valuable and applicable to performance.
Exactly. Those values should be measured and published for all the kayaks you test.
By the way, after reading some of the material about a confluent hull and boat trim I was wondering if in rough water the free-surface effect when running with or into waves has a noticeable impact on the boat’s pitching motion. Does the pod retard the flow of water from end to end and reduce that effect?
In 1991 I did a couple of experiments and wrote a couple of papers on this. In short, there is no, repeat, no, free surface effect. I have consistently argued that kayak compartments should be stuffed full of buoyancy material (I use inflated wine cask liners) to both reduce the amount of water taken on, and to eliminate free surface. Note that this is a requirement for Aus Canoeing sea kayak standards.
In one experiment I put ten litres of water into a plug, an empty shell of a boat, not even a cockpit, and rocked it. The water took two seconds end to end. In a boat with buoyancy, the water took six seconds to go from one end to the other.
In real conditions, any water inside the boat will be moving out of phase with the waves, and if anything, will improve the stability. We’ve seen this happen. (Froude and Frahm explained why.) The only disadvantage comes when you are running downwind and catching waves: the boat will be bow-down for long enough for water to concentrate there, so the bow may bury more often. A bulkhead kayak with water in the fwd compartment will behave similarly. One with water in the aft compartment behaves better in this instance.
One of the papers suggests a little experiment: ‘Take a bowl, the kind with sealing lid, of about three litre capacity. Put half a litre of water into it. Rock it about in your hands to get the feel of it: see if you can set up a rhythm. Float it in the kitchen sink or wherever and see how it behaves. Now pack it full of polystyrene from broken packaging. Again with half a litre of water in it, rock it to and fro by hand to get the feel. Can you now manage a rhythm? How does it float this time, in still water and with waves?’
Chris Cunningham decided not to publish any of this.
The June 2005 issue features ‘Over-the-Side Speed Rescue’ by BCU Coach Phil Eccles, described on the cover as ‘New Speed-rescue Technique’, In reality it is what we have known for years as the Flip and pump rescue. Most of the article is reasonable enough, if long-winded, but Eccles suggests that ‘pumping out a heavily swamped kayak is quite energy sapping’, and that others in the group consider towing rescuer and swimmer away from danger. I wrote:
Over-the-side rescue
The Editor, Sea Kayaker,
The ‘Over-the-Side Speed Rescue’ described in the June issue is not a ‘New Speed-Rescue’ technique: we’ve been teaching it in Australia for years. In Australian Canoeing documentation it is known as the Flip and pump rescue, described tersely:
‘This rescue is for situations where the paddler must be returned to the cockpit immediately, in a surf area perhaps, or where there is danger of being swept into some other hazard.
‘The swimmer rights the boat, switches on the pump if it is electric, and the rescuer stabilises it for re-entry. As soon as the paddler is aboard, he or she can paddle away, with the pump doing the work. In many cases, the spray deck can be left until later.’
I think Phil Eccles misses the point when he begins discussing manual pump and towing techniques, actions which make it no longer a ‘speedy rescue’. If the kayak is designed and built so that it is controllable with the cockpit flooded the rescued paddler can immediately begin moving away from danger, leaving the work of pumping to a hands-free pump, or until a less hazardous area is reached.
The key to this rescue, or to any other for that matter, is the cockpit volume. Most manufacturers give little thought to this, with the result that cockpits can hold 30, 40, or even more litres of water after a kayak has been capsized and righted. That amount of water sloshing about can make paddling precarious, if not impossible. Five litres or less, in an appropriately shaped cockpit, is easily coped with, and takes little time to remove.
A few months ago, Peter Lamont in Scotland devised a test to measure the amount of water remaining in a cockpit after a capsize, and he and I then refined it a little. You can read about it at <pjcarter.id.au/cit.html>. We found that kayaks with integrated cockpits retained five litres or less after a capsize. A modified conventional cockpit held about 15l, and an unmodified kayak retained an average of 36.7l. We know which we’d rather paddle.
We invite others to test their kayaks, and send us their results. (We then suggest that paddlers think about modifying their boats.)
The Flip and pump or over-the-side rescue is a valuable technique, but it must be matched with appropriately designed and equipped kayaks.
To change the subject: that paddler shown surfing on page 43 is setting himself up for shoulder injury (well described elsewhere in the June issue). Keep the elbows down!
Again, Chris Cunningham decided not to publish, pointing out that in his view the novel point of Eccles’ method was the ability of the rescuer to assist the swimmer. That’s something we’ve been doing for years, and in my view misses the point.