...I looked down. Can you see what I saw? I hope so. I was headed for a potential accident. Here's what I should have seen when I looked down...
... the pull tag on the spray-skirt showing and ready to grab if and when I should need it! One more little thing to check before pushing off, but, oh, so important. This particular skirt fits so snuggly that it's quite difficult to remove without access to the pull tag. With bare hands paddling in 7°C air, I would have been in serious difficulty trying to wet exit should I have had to - and you just never know. I fail rolls all the time, perhaps you do as well. Don't let a mistake like this happen to you!
The remainder of the paddle passed without incident!
5 comments:
Always a point worth re emphazing. When I teach students how to put on the skirt, I insist that they finish by running their hands around the perimeter to assure a good seal and to then actually take hold of the grab loop and look at it. This assures visual and tactile input that the loop is out. Anyway, I can get you into one of my classes next spring :)
I did that very thing this summer, only I didn't catch it until I was done paddling for the evening. It could have been interesting had I needed to do a wet exit.
Ron - I guess we'll both be attending Silb's spring sprayskirt training camp...
I'm looking forward to it!
The devil's always in the details, isn't it?
I've done this occasionally - since we don't roll and use nylon skirts which should implode when capsized, we might get away with it - but I try to make it part of our pre-paddle checklist...
One thing that helps - on our MEC skirts, the loop is a vivid yellow - makes it easy to notice it's not there, and to find underwater...
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