Capsized into 4 degree water The only thing different during today’s sunless breakfast is the extra wool. Nearly half the school is a bit more bundled up; both the Nature Life and Sailing groups are to partake in today’s tipping the boat event. In the hall, somebody even wishes me luck.
The day's events are to go something like this...
Get our butts out into a nice warm 5 degree day... with some nasty wind and capsize a boat and then swim to shore. Now, the advertised point of this exercise was to experience capsizing a small boat and then getting it to work again. And the reason we do this in December is to get a taste of hypothermia. We're wearing standard issue sailing clothes, something you'd wear outside on a cold day. NO wetsuit. The swim back takes a few minutes, and most people get to see the beginning effects of extreme heat loss. The process goes like this: Get a lift out to the boat, which is tied to a buoy in the middle of the marina. Flip the boat. Stand on it. Flip it back. Get in and bail out the water. Jump out of this now perfectly good boat and swim 50 meters to shore. Get onto shore and change into dry clothes. Shiver for an hour. Get warm feet in 2 hours.
So, the pictures:
We started off quite well and dry playing around with the boat. It's not every day you're suppose to rock the boat and we enjoy our opportunity.
After some minutes of mucking about, we get serious. These boats are really hard to tip, and ours was even half full of water, the only thing that worked was pulling on one side while standing on the other.
Oystain and I even cobbled together a pretty nifty plan to tip the boat and not get wet: If we grab the edge of the boat, and pull our butts up before the boat sinks, we'd stay dry. We do pretty good.
Some celebrating on the top of the boat over out staying dry, I was wet up to my stomach, Oystain was wet a bit further up. The damn thing never stays still, rocking back and forth making us look like drunk log rollers.
We do enjoy our time standing on the back side of the boat, it's not something I get to do too often, and I didn't really want to rush into the icy water. And these pictures don't show it, but the wind is nearly make-you-take-a-step strong, making this balancing act even more perilous. And the wind didn't really help with the cold either.
The process of bailing out the water is interesting, the boat can't handle the weight of 2 people standing up, it sinks and the water you just bailed out flows back in. So, you have to lay in the boat in the water, floating on your back, as you bail the first 90 liters or so. Then you can stand up and bail the rest. It's pretty cold, but the bailing gets you warm. Speaking of cold, we did get a taste of it for a few seconds while we turned the boat back over. We did our log rolling impression again as our enthusiasm to get into the boat had us pulling on the edge pretty hard. So hard the boat turned over, and then kept turning as we tried to climb in getting us back to where we started. We did this silly bit for 4 complete revolutions. And we were in the water during all of this. And this water has quite an effect, the first few seconds are pretty ok, but very soon you start hyperventilating. And that doesn't really stop, even though I was conscious of it, I couldn't really control it. Climbing into the boat and standing up makes things much better after the water drains out my clothes. Wool is truly amazing stuff, after the water drained out the cold and the wind didn't get through. Perhaps I was numb. The bailing does get the warmth back, but it's quickly dispatched by the jump into the water for the swim. I climbed out of the boat after Oystain, and started swimming. The row boat in front is our sailing teacher keeping a close eye and a close boat in case something bad happened. Kinda funny, he didn't stop rowing the whole time. He'd row and row and stay still. The wind was that bad.
The swim sucks.
The swim back is pretty bad, the stuff up to now was the boat tipping exercise, and now I enter the cold part of the exercise. The water was choppy from all the wind, and it felt like swimming around in the ocean. Only this time it's fully dressed with big steel toed boots. Fortunately the breast stroke works well wearing boots in choppy waters, and surfing and such had given me a good stroke. I finished in 1 and a half minutes or so, and the usual seemed to be closer to 3, so I got a light dose of cold. The cold I did get was pretty noticeable, in addition to the hyperventilating, other parts of my body started to stop working and my mind began to slow. The actual swim is just like in the pool trying to do one lap, I almost ran out of gas before getting there. So this was pretty standard and unexciting for me. The effects of the cold are much more interesting. During the swim, muscles move slower and I feel much weaker then I should for the work I've done. Damn good thing I have a life jacket. Walking out of the water was quite interesting, my rubber boots were filled with water and weighed nearly 10 pounds extra, and my legs weren't working right either, so walking took some extra effort and I almost fell down taking my first few steps on dry land. I didn't really notice this too much, in fact I didn't really notice anything too much. I watched the video of the event, and I remember standing there with people talking to me, but watching the video showed me what the people were saying. I don't have any memory of these meanings. That was an odd experience, watching me somewhere that I don't really remember. I changed into dry clothes and shivered for an hour. I even ran around for several minutes, which was an odd thing to do with completely numb feet. I warmed up soon after getting back to school, and my feet came back a full 2 hours after getting out, and some how I didn't get sick. Posted by byron at December 17, 2002 09:25 AM