More letters to Sea Kayaker

The Safety article in the October 2011 issue of Sea Kayaker Magazine was ‘Michipicoten Island’, an account of a near-fatal incident near Michipicoten Island in Lake Superior. A couple, paddling a double, was caught out in strong winds and capsized. After repeated attempts to reenter and control the boat failed, they activated a PLB and were eventually rescued by US Coast Guard helicopter.

In the ‘Lessons Learned’ section Roger Schumann makes a number of useful suggestions, and notes, near the end “The large cockpits allow for the entry of lots of water and for lots of sloshing (free surface) that creates instability.” He makes the common recommendation of using paddle floats to stabilise the boat. Why not start with a boat that retains its stability when flooded?

Peter Lamont and I wrote independently, and both our letters were published in the December Issue. I wrote (SK edits are shown deleted or [added]):

I agree with Roger Schumann’s commentary in the October issue on the Michipicoten Island incident, but I think he should have made more of the free surface effects on the stability of the kayak boat, described by its paddler as ‘the stability of a half-soaked log’.

Some years ago I proposed four axioms to guide design of sea kayaks:

The kayak must be controllable in all conditions with the cockpit(s) flooded
The kayak must remain controllable with water in the hull compartment(s)
Rescue methods must not require direct lifting
Self rescue must be possible without the use of extra, redundant, equipment.

The second is easy with any sea kayak: stuff any unused space in compartments with inflatable buoyancy. Always. That minimises the amount of water that can enter, and eliminates any free surface. Trim changes are minimised.

The first requires that the volume of the cockpit(s) be as small as possible. Double kayaks are wider than singles, so their cockpits also tend to be wider, with more space for water to slosh about in. The pioneers of Australian sea kayaking, the Tasmanians, realised this decades ago and built their boats with cockpit side (i.e. longitudinal) bulkheads as well as transverse. Their boats are controllable flooded.

An alternative, and neater, design is the integrated cockpit with seat and bulkheads in a single moulding. (The Nimbus Puffin is the best-known example in North America.)

The paddlers in the incident lost their manual pump. It would have made little difference. In a situation like theirs only hands-free pumps, electric or foot pumps, built in to the boat, are effective. Paddlers can concentrate on what they should be doing: paddling, and controlling the boat.

Self-draining cockpits like those of sit-on-tops may not be possible in decked kayaks, but we can make kayaks controllable in nasty situations. The general rule is that any space not already filled by gear or paddler should be filled with buoyancy material. In cockpits, that may be expanded plastics [foam] fixed in the sides. Minimise the volume.

As Roger suggests, you then need some practice.

(Peter Carter has been paddling at sea for some 35 years, and is a member of the Australian Canoeing Education and Safety Technical Committee,. He has several sea kayaking related pages at <http://www.users.on.net/~pcarter/>)

Peter wrote:

Re: SK October 2011: Michipicoten Island: Atypical August winds turn an annual summer outing into a struggle to survive.

Once again Sea Kayaker provide a valuable in-depth report of a kayaking accident we can all learn from (SK October 2011).

Your reviewer rightly identifies four major aspects that contributed to the problems that Bob and Judy encountered when their double kayak capsized and subsequently the front compartment flooded as well, necessitating a helicopter rescue. Curiously though, the third aspect of inadequate flotation (buoyancy) in the double kayak was given the least attention.

Data from a 2007 survey of published kayak specifications reveals an average cockpit volume of 170 litres for 67 single kayak models and 430 litres cockpit space for 6 double kayak models for which complete volume data were available. (The volume of most paddler’s legs would fall within the range of 40 to 60 litres). These figures confirm your reviewer’s comments.

Bob very creditably regained the cockpit of his craft no less than three times and Judy once, but each time the craft was not stable. This is a design fault but manufacturers have no incentive to improve the safety performance of their kayaks and canoes while there is neither legislation nor public pressure to do so.

Experiments and incidents clearly demonstrate that superior safety perfomance results when single kayaks have solid, end buoyancy, confluent hulls and a low Cockpit Intake Test (CIT) measurement (see: http://pjcarter.id.au/cit.html). Paddlers of double kayaks would especially benefit from converting their craft to meet these specifications.

It is not good enough that a decked kayak should have “masses of buoyancy” and remain on the surface—it should be stable and controllable as well, like sit-on-top craft. These point the way to a performance that can be almost matched in decked kayaks when buoyancy is designed to exclude the maximum amount of water from entering in the first place. Buoyancy is what being in a boat is all about: anything less is just worrying!

Peter Lamont, Isle of Luing, Scotland

The editor deleted the word ‘Test’ from the sentence in the sixth paragraph, and placed the link to the test in an addendum below the signature line. He also added imperial measures in parentheses.

Our letters were preceded by one from Moulton Avery, who included ‘inadequate kayak flotation’ in his list of elements common in incidents. The following issue, February 2012, contained a letter entitled ‘Sea Socks: An effective option’:

In the December 2001 [sic] issue’s letters to the editor, Peter Carter and Peter Lamont made some good points about reducing the floodable volume of kayak cockpits (in reference to the swamping of a tandem cited in “Michipicoten Island,” SK Oct ’11 ), but I think both overlooked sea socks—a simpler way to preserve buoyancy and minimize free-surface effects. I think sea socks are essential in a typical double kayak. They are much lighter and less expensive than a pod or using closed-cell foam, which fills much of a big double kayak’s cockpits. With sea socks (as with pods), once the paddlers are back aboard, the kayak will be quite stable and have little water that needs to be removed.

Paddlers who have practiced completely pumping out a double (one that’s not outfitted to reduce cockpit volume) will be far more likely to consider adding sea socks and a battery-powered pump and have at least two well-secured hand pumps for backup.

Until most of the water is pumped out, a swamped kayak is far more vulnerable to capsizing again because of the free water sloshing around inside . Because pumping takes so long, is tiring, and is often a two-handed operation, the paddler is especially vulnerable to capsizing again during this time if the kayak isn’t stabilized in some reliable way, a way in which the paddler won’t have to pay constant attention to keeping the kayak upright during this long and critical period.

The best stabilization is likely another kayak and kayaker or two, creating a solid raft by bracing across the deck and helping with reattaching spray decks and pumping. If other kayaks aren’t available to make a raft, a fixed outrigger paddle float or an inflatable sponson system will probably work best to stabilize the swamped kayak. If no paddle float or other stabilizing device is available, then the paddler must somehow be ready to brace all the while he is reentering, attaching the spray deck and pumping.

Once your kayak has been stabilized and pumped out, you should resume paddling only if that appears to be the best option. Staying in a stabilized mode might be the best option if you are far from shore and the conditions are still beyond your paddling capabilities. Why risk having to capsize and pump all over again if you are already well stabilized, relatively warm, and know that rescuers have been contacted and are on the way?

–Matt Broze
Shoreline, WA

Well, no, we hadn’t overlooked sea socks, we deliberately made no mention because they do not fix the problem at source: at the design and construction stage. The boat must be stable and controllable flooded without the addition of any piece of gear, sea sock, paddle float or whatever.

(As it happens, the February issue contains an account of the rescue of a swamped kayak that was fitted with a sea sock: ‘Guide to the rescue’, p 50. In fairness, the kayak in question was a folding type in poor condition.)

There followed a number of messages between Peter Lamont, Alan Byde, Christopher Cunningham (SK editor) and myself. Cunningham raised questions about patents, why manufacturers were not already using minimum volume cockpits... These messages are not reproduced here.

This time Peter Lamont and I made a combined submission:

Matt Broze wonders (‘Sea Socks: An effective option’, SK Feb 12) whether we overlooked sea socks as a means of reducing cockpit volume. The answer is that no, we didn’t.

Matt seems to have completely missed our point, not add-on but designed in. We take the view that manufacturers of kayaks and canoes, if they are professional, should seek to design their craft to be as safe as possible, and to fail safe. This, however, is almost never the case.

We are puzzled why Matt commented “Paddlers who have practiced completely pumping out a double (one that’s not outfitted to reduce cockpit volume) will be far more likely to consider adding sea socks...” For us, this is an admission that the double kayak(s) referred to are deficient in safety performance but instead of advocating a design improvement Matt appears to us to accept substandard design. We know of no commercial double kayaks “...outfitted to reduce cockpit volume...” to a sufficient standard (e.g. cockpit intake measurement 20 litres or less). We are surprised that he is happy to advise owners to add a dubious after-market accessory to remedy the buoyancy design fault that he freely acknowledges (in his third paragraph). It is also clear that the kayak designs he refers to, and seems happy with, are not stable until pumped out “Once your kayak has been stabilized and pumped out...”

It was a near-fatal incident with a sea sock that started Alan Byde on his work more than thirty years ago to develop minimum volume cockpits. He, and we, have argued consistently (and persistently) that a minimum volume cockpit or its equivalent, must be designed-in to a kayak and be an integral part of its construction, not an add-on. This argument is based on hard data and unequivocal and undeniable experimental results.

Despite the published statement in our letters “Experiments and incidents clearly demonstrate that superior safety performance results when single kayaks have solid, end buoyancy, confluent hulls and a low cockpit intake” no-one has enquired about the evidence. Despite this information being available for more than twenty years no manufacturer or designer has shown the slightest interest (save only one exception known to us).

Since the mid 1990s Australian Canoeing documentation has been clear on this. The current Safety Guidelines read (p 22):

‘When used in sea conditions, the kayak must be a recognised sea kayak with:

• Minimum volume cockpit (bulkheads or integrated cockpit) so that the kayak is controllable in sea conditions with the cockpit flooded
• Positive buoyancy made up of compartments or fixed flotation—it is recommended that empty compartments be filled with buoyancy material (...) that will minimise the amount of water that enters a compartment in the event that its integrity is compromised’

There’s more on page 23:

• you should be able to paddle your boat, with a fully flooded cockpit, away from a dangerous situation in offshore conditions and then be able to completely evacuate the water from the cockpit in the same conditions.’

Meanwhile the public paddle on, oblivious, until things go wrong...

We are grateful to Sea Kayaker for having the editorial independence to publish our views (SK December 2011).

Christopher Cunningham declined to publish, partly because the topic was becoming ‘stale’. The underlying problem is one of denial, denial that a problem exists: that current kayak designs do not fail safe, but become uncontrollable when flooded. Instead of correcting the design, they add bits and pieces like paddle floats that must be rigged in the conditions that led to the flooding.

A term used in computer programming is ‘technical debt’. There may be several ways of initially solving a problem, perhaps a simple ‘quick and dirty’ solution (cheap) and others, more complex (and initially more expensive), that may be easier to maintain in the long term. When bugs have to be fixed or new features added to the quick and dirty situation the process is now more difficult and expensive. The technical debt must be paid, now with interest.

In the case of sea kayaks, minimum volume cockpits are more complex to design and build, and therefore more expensive, but when things go wrong the interest on the technical debt is much less. No added sea socks, paddle floats, manual pumps, etc. because the boat is sufficient in itself.

Where do we go from here? There were tentative plans for a book, Unsafe in any sea?, based on the earlier flooding experiments by Peter Lamont, Duncan Winning and myself.