What could go wrong out on the water?
In our second set of excerpts from the series of SUP SAFETY books written by Bill Dawes, National Safety Officer for stand up paddleboarding in New Zealand, we’re going to look at the sort of problems that you might possibly encounter while on a paddleboard. Over to Bill…
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
You’ve done your planning as we discussed in the previous blog, you’ve carefully checked the conditions and you’ve invested in the best safety equipment. Yet things still can - and do - go wrong. This is where the third cornerstone of paddleboarding safety comes into play: knowing how to deal with a situation when things don’t go according to plan.
There are two quite distinct aspects to dealing with problems:
Knowing what to do.
Doing it.
This might seem a statement of the blindingly obvious, but these are actually two very different things. Neither is sufficient on its own – it’s no good knowing what to do if you aren’t then able to make it happen, nor is it much use being great at performing under pressure if you don’t actually have a plan for what to do in the first place. The worst type of emergency situation is one that you have never given any prior thought to. Having to come up with a plan of action and apply it while under pressure (which could be physical, mental or both) is just so much harder than simply applying a pre-planned solution. This is why organizations train for emergencies. The more you practice dealing with a situation, the easier and more instinctive it becomes. The training kicks in and the comfort of routine makes up for the heightened adrenaline levels of this being ‘for real’.
I’m not suggesting that you should go out and physically recreate all possible paddleboarding problems and solutions so that you can practice dealing with them. But you most certainly can, and should, at very least, have a think about them. And when you’re out there on the water, spare a thought to what a potential problem might look and feel like in practice. “OK, what would I do here if my paddle snapped?” Or: “If I suddenly started feeling ill, where would be the best place to go ashore and who would I call?” If you’re part of a paddling social group, have a chat about it when you’re out there on the water, or indeed over a coffee or glass of wine in the after-paddle social. Talk it through; choose a problem scenario and discuss how you’d deal with it.
So let’s start by looking at what could possibly go wrong, and then in the next few blog posts here we’ll consider the actual process of coping with a specific unexpected event.
The problems you might encounter while paddleboarding can be grouped into three main categories:
Equipment Problems
Environment Problems
Physical Problems
There are also some specific problems you may encounter in certain environments, such as white-water paddling or SUPsurfing. These are covered in Book Two of the SUP Safety series, as they’re rather more specialist.
Let’s look at each of these main types of problems in a bit more detail.
Equipment problems: breakages, failures and losses
We’re actually pretty lucky with paddleboarding, as most of our equipment problems are fairly easily solved if you know what to do. We’re not a gear-critical watersport like windsurfing or wingfoiling, where a component breakage can really leave you stranded, nor are we a high-speed watersport where gear failure can result in a dangerous crash.
The kit trouble we might encounter falls under four main headings.
Board problems
There’s a big difference in terms of severity between the sort of things that could go wrong with inflatable boards and hard boards. Structural failure of an inflatable board while on the water is rare but it does happen, and is undoubtedly one of the most extreme paddleboarding emergency scenarios that might be encountered. So much so that we’ll devote an entire blog to it very soon.
Fin problems
Losing or breaking your fin isn’t uncommon, but luckily it’s not too big a deal if you know the right tricks, which we cover in full in Book 3 of the SUP Safety series.
Paddle problems
Your paddle is your engine, so you might assume that if it fails you’re in trouble? But again, fortunately there are workarounds, which we cover in full in Book 3 of the SUP Safety series.
Other problems
There are quite a few other minor equipment problems, which on their own probably qualify more as an inconvenience or irritation as opposed to a significant compromise of your safety and wellbeing. The most important thing is simply understanding the ramifications. If you’re at the beach and you notice a few air bubbles coming from around your valve, is that serious or can it be dealt with when you get home? If you fall off your board and realize that your leash fixing has come adrift, what should your immediate actions be? A bit of prior consideration can mean the difference between making the right and wrong decisions when a situation arises. Again, we cover this in full in Book 3 of the SUP Safety series.
Environment problems: unexpected changes in the conditions.
The environment is by far and away the most common cause of emergency situations for paddleboarders. Either because it has changed for the worse, or because it wasn’t suitable in the first place. Understanding your environment is a huge topic in itself; indeed it is the entire focus of Book Two in this series. The more understanding you have of what is going on around you, the less likely you are to be caught out by it.
There are five potential environmental changes that can arise to problems:
Changes in the weather
If you didn’t check the forecast before hitting the water, then any change is going to be unexpected! But even if you did check it thoroughly, and nothing untoward was forecast, change can still happen.
The good news is that it’s relatively rare for a severe weather change to occur entirely without warning - and the more you know what the warning signs are, the less likely you are to get caught out. However, if you missed those signs and a significant weather change hits you, then for sure you’ve got a situation to deal with. And making the right decisions and taking the right actions in the right order is going to make a huge difference to the outcome.
Changes in the sea state
A change in sea state can be caused by a surprisingly large number of scenarios. Indeed, in SUP SAFETY Book 3 there’s a whole section devoted to this, because understanding the cause makes it so much easier to know how to react. For now, let’s just summarise the most likely causes.
A strengthening wind will cause the water to get choppier, in which case you’ve got a doubly difficult scenario to deal with. But the change in water state may be due to the wind filling in somewhere else; further up the lake or out to sea, or whatever. If you’re at the ocean, you may be experiencing the arrival of an ocean swell. Or the water may have become bumpy due to boat traffic, either nearby or further away. Alternatively, it could be to do with underlying currents. You might have paddled into a tidal race, or a wind-against-tide scenario. Or you’ve paddled into an inflow or outflow area of a lake or estuary. Any of these can cause a change in the water state, which may mean you need to change your plans.
Changes in the current
Again, there are numerous reasons why this may happen - and the biggest risk with current changes is that, unless it has a noticeable impact on the water state as detailed above - you may not notice it until it’s too late. Unless you’re really close to the shore or fixed objects in the water, it’s surprisingly difficult to tell when you’re in fast flowing water. And again, once you’ve identified the risk, making the right decisions and taking the right appropriate actions in the right order is vitally important. Indeed, critically so, because being on a paddleboard in fast flowing water is a potentially very dangerous environment (whatever leash you may be wearing).
Changes in the water environment
This one is unlikely to catch you entirely unawares, but it’s still quite a common scenario. There you are, enjoying a peaceful paddle when all of a sudden the tranquility is shattered by a pack of jet-skiers, or powerboaters coming out to make the most of the flat water for some towing sports. You might suddenly find a yacht or dinghy racing fleet heading in your direction. Or maybe it’s the under-water environment that’s changed; and you find yourself receiving some unwelcome attention from some inquisitive sea life.
The rules and conventions for sharing the water (human or otherwise) with other users are discussed in Book Two, but generally the best advice is simply to get out of there – go find somewhere more sheltered to paddle! Bigger (particularly powered) craft are going to be chopping the water up anyway, as well as creating a collision threat.
Changes in the shore environment
This one is rather less common, but it’s caught enough people out to warrant inclusion here. The most common instance is a miscalculation in regard to tide state – you set off from a beach and return a few hours later to discover that the beach has actually gone completely; the sea is now up to the cliffs or sea wall. Likewise with a super-low tide scenario. It’s easy to dismiss this as bad planning, but even the most experienced paddler can get caught out occasionally by a super-high spring or king tide.
There have also been a few instances of a shore environment changing character in a rather different way. You set off for a paddle, and return later to discover some major kayak or school swim event or whatever is gearing up, so the entire beachfront is filled with craft ready to set off, or a thousand kids in the water making it incredibly hard to reach shore safely without causing an incident. (Or in the most extreme instance I’ve heard about, a paddler returning to his launch site to discover a full-fledged gang confrontation taking place on the beach!)
It’s calm and glassy on the water but this cloud is getting bigger, and moving in your direction. As discussed in book 2, an active cumulonimbus cloud like this could bring strong wind squalls, hail, rain, lightning, even tornados. Even though it’s still some distance away and not an imminent threat right now, you should be keeping a very close eye on it and modifying your plans if necessary.
Physical problems: illness or injuries.
What should you do if you suffer some sort of illness or injury while on the water? This is a very real scenario that many paddleboarders have encountered – no matter how fit and healthy you feel right now, it could totally happen to you too. As always, properly considering a potential problem like this before it happens is time well spent. Because if you’re ill or injured you’re absolutely not in the best state to be making critical decisions.
Things Can Go Wrong
There are also ‘freak’ instances that paddleboarders have been subjected to, such as getting lost or disorientated. The point of all this is - things can, and do, change. You may think it’ll never happen to you but it’s very much a numbers game. If you go paddleboarding often enough, particularly if you like to visit different locations and paddle in a variety of water states, then you are eventually going to find yourself in a situation where you need to change your plans. Which doesn’t sound very scary, does it? And that’s the point. If you’ve already thought about what you’re going to do if your situation changes, then that’s all it is - a change of plan. From the interviews I’ve carried out with paddleboarding survivors of a huge number of situations during my work as Paddleboarding Safety Officer, it’s absolutely clear that just a bit of prior consideration or anticipation makes all the difference. In some cases, paddlers dealt with situations so efficiently that it never got anywhere close to becoming dangerous. In other situation, what should have been a minor inconvenience developed into a full-blown emergency because of a lack of knowledge leading to terrible decisions.
Over the next few blogs we’ll unpack a few specific examples of some of these potential problem situations, unpacking how to deal with them in the most efficient manner, as well as what can be done to prevent them occurring in the first place – which is always the best solution of all!
This text is extracted and modified from Book 3 of the SUP SAFETY - How to stay safe on your stand-up paddleboard series by Bill Dawes, available in Kindle or paperback form from Amazon. In our next few blogs posts we will be publishing further extracts from the books, looking at particular emergency situations and how to deal with them. However, if you really want to learn everything you can about being safe on your stand up paddleboard, we’d thoroughly recommend checking out the books for yourself.