For the last 6 months my commute to and from work has involved a 4.5 km kayak crossing between Stony Point and my home on French Island in Westernport Bay, Victoria, Australia.<\/p>\n
Last Thursday night I set off for home in slightly stronger conditions than I had attempted previously (20-28 knots). I had the option of waiting for the ferry, but it was a tailwind, there was still plenty of light, the tide was offering a slight assistance. It looked like fun! If I did capsize I was confident in my ability to roll myself back up, or failing that to re-enter and pump out.<\/p>\n
I was about to learn that this confidence was ill-founded.<\/p>\n
Swell was quite messy, but I was flying along until about 2 kms from home when a wave tipped me over.<\/p>\n
I had practiced my roll regularly, but with the pressure on and in rough conditions I couldn\u2019t get myself back up, so had to do a wet exit. Then I found that the re-entry techniques I had practiced in calmer weather were too difficult. I couldn\u2019t get enough water out of the cockpit to make it stable enough to re-enter.<\/p>\n
The radio that I usually carried had for some reason not charged overnight, so I had not brought it. I got my phone out to call for help, and found that its waterproof pouch was flooded.<\/p>\n
Holding the boat, I started kicking for shore. After about 30 minutes I was starting to feel the cold so I activated my PLB while I still had the dexterity to do so.<\/p>\n
My memory is pretty patchy after that. I remember my feet touching the bottom, and I have an image of the helicopter circling around. Initially I had tried to keep the PLB above the water, but by the end I had let it go (tethered to me), which may have been why they couldn\u2019t pin-point my location.<\/p>\n
On shore my partner had initiated a response, and quite a few of my neighbours had come down to help search. One of them found me kneeling in the shallows clutching my boat. I was helped into the heli and flown to Frankston hospital with moderate hypothermia.<\/p>\n
I had been in the 13 degree (55 F) water from 1.5 hours and my temperature was 30.5 (87 F) degrees.<\/p>\n
I will need to improve my self-rescue skills, and be more conservative with regards to conditions before I next head offshore alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the last 6 months my commute to and from work has involved a 4.5 km kayak crossing between Stony Point and my home on French Island in Westernport Bay, Victoria, Australia. Last Thursday night I set off for home in slightly stronger conditions than I had attempted previously (20-28 knots). I had the option […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"template":"","survivor-category":[],"terrain":[22],"survivor-event":[133,128],"survivor-cause":[126],"survivor-rescue":[2300],"class_list":["post-17208","survivor-stories","type-survivor-stories","status-publish","hentry","terrain-ocean","survivor-event-rogue-wave","survivor-event-thunder-storm","survivor-cause-weather","survivor-rescue-other"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-stories\/17208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-stories"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/survivor-stories"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"survivor-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-category?post=17208"},{"taxonomy":"terrain","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/terrain?post=17208"},{"taxonomy":"survivor-event","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-event?post=17208"},{"taxonomy":"survivor-cause","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-cause?post=17208"},{"taxonomy":"survivor-rescue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-rescue?post=17208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}