Scout Drowns

[packsaddle 753]

Hi Vicki!

Actually with regard to swim competitions, EVERY open water meet I have assisted had a watercraft alongside EVERY individual competitor for the long courses (and I've had to take a few aboard who couldn't make the distance). The shorter open-water competitions had lanes designated and safety boats were stationed at strategic locations just in case. The shorter ones only lasted a few minutes compared to hours for the long course competitions.

 

But I basically agree with Beavah with regard to institutional requirements and sensible practice in our private lives. When this unit is on the water we adhere to SSD and SA. But personally, I often go it alone in my 'yak, even down the Chattooga (carefully listening for banjos) and other rivers in this region. I am a scouter and I suppose that someday I could be the subject of one of these threads but I know the risks and I am experienced enough to minimize those risks. It's similar to solo backpacking. The risks are there. We weigh them against the benefits and make a choice...a personal one.

Recently a young woman died on a local river after she was swept over a very high waterfall (over 100 feet high). She knew the waterfall was just downstream. She made a poor choice. It's over for her.

But as Beavah says, experience is the kind of understanding that helps us avoid those poor choices. Having a survived a few poor choices myself, I have a tremendous appreciation of the potential consequences and I avoid those choices now.

....well most of the time. The temptation to tickle the tail of the dragon is still there and I admit...it is just so much fun.

It's a guy thing, Vicki.

I'm doing my best to provide some sexist claptrap. How am I doin?

[Vicki 11]

Hey, doing pretty well on the claptrap front!

 

Bear in mind, I am talking about youth here. As long as adults are providing appropriate mentoring and examples in settings related to youth, I'm good. I've been known to wander down a trail or two by myself just to hear the aspens whisper.

 

Water is a whole 'nother animal, I evolved on land. I love water - Scuba, swimming, whatever. My choice is to not swim alone. But, as others point out, when you are old enough to make your own choices, have at it! (Seriously off topic, my problem is when adults aren't willing to take the consequences of their choices.)

 

Vicki

[desertrat77 1144]

Liberty--wonderful, with consequences both good and bad.

[Beavah 205]

 

Actually with regard to swim competitions, EVERY open water meet I have assisted had a watercraft alongside EVERY individual competitor for the long courses (and I've had to take a few aboard who couldn't make the distance).

 

Must not have very many competitors, eh?

 

Around here, tri events that include teenagers typically have a hundred or more competitors per age group startin' at da 0.5 mile open water swim. There are some kayak and rowboat safety boaters who do a fine job, but da ratio is more than an order of magnitude off from your 1:1.

 

B

 

[packsaddle 753]

The last 5K event had about 35 competitors with staggered starts (yes, 35 boats, canoes mostly). The numbers increase for the shorter distances. For something as short as a half mile, there might be just a series of strategically-placed boats. With over a hundred competitors, did they 'run' in heats, I hope?

 

Vicki, thanks. I'll apologize to the males and note that women seem more often to make their poor choices in romance. The Perry Mason rule: Men kill for money while women kill for love.

We had a lead secretary who maintained a Teutonic grip on the petty cash account (this is for a federal agency office). She kept tight control and accounting for anything and everything we did...but after a heartbreaking divorce, she threw her life away and absconded with the petty cash (just a few $thousand) and was later caught trying to make it into Canada with the sleazy guy she'd fallen for. Women just seem to WANT to believe....

[Vicki 11]

Pack, I ain't touchin' that one with a ten foot pole.

 

Vicki

[packsaddle 753]

Heck, don't hold back - that's why I have all those little circular marks all over me...women daring each other to touch me with a 10-foot pole.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

[sailingpj 18]

First off I want to apologize if something like this has already been said. I bookmarked this topic a few weeks ago and just now got back to my computer, so I haven't read very far yet. I just want to respond to something that LIBob posted.

 

"Still, Eagle Scout David Hanson knew BSA safe boating procedures and neglected to follow them. The result was his death. Despite the limits of media articles, that much is clear"

 

Now, the consensus for this case study, from what I have read so far, is that David violated one, possibly two points of Safety Afloat. Having a buddy boat for sure, and he and the other person might not have had the proper skill proficiency. Beavah brought up that having a buddy boat is nonstandard practice in the non-scouting world. I strongly agree with him on that. The only time I have seen anything that even approximates a buddy boat in the non-scouting is when two families or a large group of friends decide to take their boats to the same place, or with jet skis, and often kayaks or other small boats.

 

It is just really impractical and expensive to have a buddy boat most of the time. Take my most recent sailing adventure, I was one of three crew on a 47' sailboat. I helped take it from Miami to Newport, RI. Did we have a buddy boat? No. Did we need one? No. Would one have made us any safer? Possibly, however they would only have been able to help us if they got there before people ended up in the water. Once someone falls in the water even during the day, it is very difficult to find them. The ocean is huge, and even a small amount of chop obscures a man overboard very quickly. There is a saying (sort of) in the sailing community.

 

If you fall overboard at night don't expect to be found, the best that the other people on your boat will be able to do for you is go inside, pull out the rum and toast your memory.

 

As that applies to this case I don't think that a buddy boat would have helped. According to the second article they put out a distress call which the coast guard received. Now, if whatever happened to their boat happened suddenly enough that the coast guard was not able to get even an approximate position and heading from the boat then they would have been in the water before a buddy boat would be able to help them. It only takes one blink of the eye to lose sight of a person in the water during the day. At night, even with a strobe light, it is usually very difficult to see someone in the water.

 

Now LIBob, I do agree with you that David knew BSA safe boating procedures, I do agree that he chose not to follow them. I do not agree that the result was his death. I believe that even if he had followed BSA's safe boating rules he would probably still be dead. It is sad, but accidents happen. Boating is a high risk activity, but it is safer than a lot of other things, like crossing the street in a busy city. I haven't looked up the numbers recently, but I think I can safely say that more people die on our freeways every year than die on our waterways.

 

Out on the water there are rocks that aren't marked on charts, mechanical equipment fails, that is all part of boating. That stuff can hurt you just as easily during the day as it can at night. I personally believe that it is safer to be on the water at night than during the day. Most of the time the people who are out on the water at night know something about what they are doing. It is during the day that you get the yahoo drunken idiots that crash their boat because they don't know what they are doing. Going out on a 15 foot recreational boat at night is not Russian roulette. Yes, it has its dangers, but they are no different than the dangers during the day. You can still run over things and punch a hole in the boat during the day, the hose clamps on your water valves can fail during the day just as they can at night.

 

Sorry for the long winded post, but I just hate it when people make boating sound more dangerous than it is. My point is that yes, he made his decisions, but I don't see anything wrong with them. Now, maybe there is some special circumstance that I am not aware of that applies to this situation, if so I will stand corrected, but in my opinion he did not make the wrong choices. This kind of accident happens every so often. There is usually not much you can do to prevent them. Looking back and trying to second guess people's choices is usually the wrong approach. If something breaks then engineers and mechanics should look and see if they can fix it so that it doesn't break again. If they hit an uncharted rock, then that show that the charts need to be updated (they really do need to get updated now). If they hit a submerged log or something else, well often times you can't see thing like that at all.

 

Again, in a situation like this it does no good to second guess someones choices, especially with the little information that we have. We really don't know what happened, and we probably never will. It is just disrespectful to the memory of this Eagle scout to try to place the blame for his death on his choices, especially when they were not bad choices.

[sailingpj 18]

Ok, I have read the entire thread now and have a couple more things to say. Again, sorry for the long windedness, but this is a bit of a sore spot for me.

 

I do not agree with the people who say that you should never swim without a buddy. I think that that is fine if that is what you are comfortable with, but that rule should not be pushed on everyone else.

 

LIBob, sorry to call you out again, but I really disagree with a lot of what you are saying.

 

"I respectfuly submit that if you EVER swim without a buddy then yoiu are violating one of the basic tenets of scouting."

 

First off, sometimes you do not intend to go swimming. There have been a couple times where I have been walking along and very suddenly and unexpectedly found myself submerged in cold water. Both times no one was around so I swam to the nearest ladder and climbed back onto the dock.

 

I will gladly swim with a buddy at scouting events, it is just more fun, but when I am on my own time and I want to go over to the pool to swim laps for a while to relax I don't want to have to find a buddy to swim with. Usually I avoid swimming in our local pool when there are other people in it anyway because they get in the way.

 

Ok, now just two other things. These two quotes contradict each other, and I would like to know which one you really believe please.

 

"Damn straight we should.

 

Specifically we should teach that under any circumstances besides

- fishing in the local 5-foot deep pond

- a commercial grade fishing boat etc.

every boat should have a buddy boat. "

 

and

 

"You may tend your lobster pots however you wish. I am going to continue to tach my son and every scout in the troop NEVER to swim without a buddy, and NEVER to operate a small boat without a buddy boat."

 

In the first quote you say that a commercial fishing boat needs to have a buddy boat. In the second quote you only specify small boats.

 

I am just wondering because 90% of the time I would agree with you on the small boat needing a buddy thing. However, if you want to require that all fishing boats from small 10 foot skiffs to big 150 foot commercial fishing vessels need to have a buddy, well that is both excessively impractical, and it is very expensive. Some of those boats are better built and have better (newer, more expensive, better tech) gear than on some of the Coast Guard boats.

 

Yes, I am sure of that. My dad was in the Coast Guard, I have been on the bridges of a couple different cutters, and I have driven some of their other smaller boats (they are pretty cool). I have also worked as a deckhand on several sports fishing boats. I know one captain who buys new electronics for his boat every two years. Plus he has been a captain for longer that a lot of people in the coast guard have been alive.

 

I am getting a little side tracked here, the point is that for most boats over 20 feet they do not really need a buddy boat. I am thinking Cal 20, or J 22 type boats here, not large dinghies, and I am not knowledgeable enough in small power boats to comment on them.

 

LIBob, I am just saying all of this, not to insult your or anything, just for general educational purposes. What I am seeing when I read what you say and how other people respond to you is that you are trying to make rules and generalizations without a solid grasp on the subject. It sounds like you are making decisions out of fear of the unknown rather than from experience. That is what I think a lot of the other posters are saying. They aren't trying to put you down or anything, they are just trying to explain why certain practices that you see as required for all activities are overly strict normal application.

 

Small boat racing in particular is one of the times when the buddy system does not work. It is just like the swimming thing, the point is to get as far in front of the rest of the boats as possible. You can be as nice and friendly as you want when not racing, but from the moment the the first signal in the starting sequence is sent to the moment you cross the finish line everyone else sailing on the coarse is your mortal enemy (unless of course they are the race committee, then you be as nice to them as possible).

 

Edited to add:

My basic point is that hard and fast rules for this kind of thing don't really work. It would be more effective and safer if people were taught to use their brain to assess a situation before deciding on a course of action.

 

Example:

There are plenty of times that I have sailed my laser (a type of catboat) with no other boats around, and nobody else on the boat with me. I was safe because I know the conditions, I knew my limitations, and I used my brain to decide whether or not to go out. Now, how I discovered my limitations is a matter for another discussion all together.(This message has been edited by sailingpj)

[Engineer61 19]

Sailingpj wrote:

 

"There are plenty of times that I have sailed my laser (a type of catboat) with no other boats around, and nobody else on the boat with me. I was safe because I know the conditions, I knew my limitations, and I used my brain to decide whether or not to go out. Now, how I discovered my limitations is a matter for another discussion all together."

 

Here here! And there is the fundamental issue with most people, especially anyone with not enough years under their belt...

 

"I knew my limitations"

[sailingpj 18]

"Here here! And there is the fundamental issue with most people, especially anyone with not enough years under their belt... "

 

What is fundamentally wrong with knowing and understanding your limitations, then using your judgment so that you do not put yourself in a situation that exceeds them?