Body Found Off Santa Barbara May Be Kayaker's (Non Fishing)

No wetsuit. No PFD.

+ "[he] apparently had difficulty swimming."
    What a shame - only 24 yrs old.

Ive never owned a wet suit and I've been swimming in the ocean my entire life. They are nice though and it is on my wish list. I need booties. Last time i went out I couldn't feel my toes after two hours and had to come in. I figured if i ever flipped i would get back in my boat and paddle my freezing ass back in. Hell in the summer i have flipped my boat 1st thing in the day and just kept fishing  feeling perfectly comfortable.( Some how when i rolled the kayak back over the fishing poles where still in the pole holders and the tackle was there too.) Even on a sunny day in the winter i tried surfing my kayak with no wet suit and wasn't cold at all.( I actually rode a 3 ft face decently on my O.K. Prowler. I just paddled like crazy on the side of the boat the face of the wave was on. Then i tried it again but i couldn't keep up with the wave this time. The boat got sideways and I went for a roll. But hey i was told it couldn't be done at all and didn't believe that.)

(Tom Jager, a former world record sprint swimmer, was clocked at 2.29 meters per second.)   

that is still only 5 mph ( 7.5 fps) none of us are world class athletes! I bet most people can't run more than 5 mph anymore for more than 400 yards.

(Tom Jager, a former world record sprint swimmer, was clocked at 2.29 meters per second.)   

that is still only 5 mph ( 7.5 fps) none of us are world class athletes! I bet most people can't run more than 5 mph anymore for more than 400 yards.

5 mph is a 12 minute mile , most people can almost do that as a very fast walk . I walk just over 4 mph as a normal pace !

On 10.19.08, I did the Treasure Island-2-YMCA Embarcadero swim.  Line of sight distance was 1.5mi, but ended up doing ~1.6mi due to tidal swing and crappy nav skills.  52 degree surface temp at 0830.  Finished in 57:24, so about 1.67 mph, mediocre 83'rd place out of 221 finishers.

Really wanted to go skins, but I pu$$ed out and swam in a 5mm De Soto Speedtube, kinda like slickskin knickers see pic.  Lots of people swimming in nothing but briefs.  The last finisher?  58 year old David Rummell, of San Jose, 1:37:45.0, no wetsuit!!

Jumping off the ferry boat at TI was a wake-up shock like no other, Cold didn't bug me too much until about 40 mins, at which i lost sensation in my toes.  Ironically, didn't get REALLY cold until I got on land, then my legs and back just massive cramps all over.

I should have mentioned that according to the experts, swimming accelerates temperature loss in cold water by between 30% to 50% as opposed to tucking in your extremities and floating. If you don't have a good wetsuit but can raise someone on VHS you are probably better off not swimming long distances.

Relating my TI2Y situation to last saturday.  I'm again doing a cold water dive with Brian G and the MFDT, except this time, I'm in a 5mm longjohn tri-suit with a hood, gloves, and boots .  Felt like ~50 degree water was just venting in and out of my suit.  Felt WAAAY colder in Carmel then swimming TI2Y.  Just floating at the surface with the occasional dive down was just not sufficient movement, started shivering at about 25 min immersion.  Had to call it at 40 min immersion.  I'm just sayin I felt colder just floating around than I ever did during my last cold water swim.

its pretty incredible how much water time people can train themselves to endure.  From SFGATE.com

56-year-old becomes 1st woman to swim Atlantic

Jennifer Figge pressed her toes into the Caribbean sand, exhilarated and exhausted as she touched land this week for the first time in almost a month.

Reaching a beach in Trinidad, she became the first woman on record to swim across the Atlantic Ocean — a dream she'd had since the early 1960s, when a stormy trans-Atlantic flight got her thinking she could don a life vest and swim the rest of the way if needed.

The 56-year-old left the Cape Verde Islands off Africa's western coast on Jan. 12, battling waves of up to 30 feet and strong winds.

David Higdon, a friend of Figge who kept in touch with her via satellite phone, said she had originally planned to swim to the Bahamas, but inclement weather forced her to veer 1,000 miles off course to Trinidad, where she arrived on Thursday.

Figge plans to continue her odyssey, swimming from Trinidad to the British Virgin Islands, where she expects to arrive in late February. The crew won't compute the total distance Figge swam until after she completes the journey, Higdon said.

Then it's home to Aspen, Colo. — where she trained for months in an outdoor pool amid snowy blizzards — to reunite with her Alaskan Malamute.

"My dog doesn't know where I am," she told The Associated Press on Saturday by phone. "It's time for me to get back home to Hank."

The dog swirled in her thoughts, as did family and friends, as Figge stroked through the chilly Atlantic waters escorted by a sailboat. She saw a pod of pilot whales, several turtles, dozens of dolphins — but no sharks.

"I was never scared," Figge said. "Looking back, I wouldn't have it any other way. I can always swim in a pool."

Her journey comes a decade after French swimmer Benoit Lecomte made the first known solo trans-Atlantic swim, covering nearly 4,000 miles from Massachusetts to France in 73 days. No woman on record has made the crossing.

Figge woke most days around 7 a.m., eating pasta and baked potatoes while she and the crew assessed the weather. Her longest stint in the water was about eight hours, and her shortest was 21 minutes. Crew members would throw bottles of energy drinks as she swam; if the seas were too rough, divers would deliver them in person. At night she ate meat, fish and peanut butter, replenishing the estimated 8,000 calories she burned a day.

Figge wore a red cap and wet suit, with her only good-luck charm underneath: an old, red shirt to guard against chafing, signed by friends, relatives and her father, who recently died.

The other cherished possession she kept onboard was a picture of Gertrude Ederle, an American who became the first woman to swim across the English Channel.

"We have a few things in common," Figge said. "She wore a red hat and she was of German descent. We both talk to the sea, and neither one of us wanted to get out."

Figge arrived on Trinidad's Chacachacare Island, an abandoned leper colony, at 5:20 p.m. She plans to leave Trinidad on Monday night.

...but I pu$$ed out and swam in a 5mm De Soto Speedtube...  58 year old David Rummell, of San Jose, 1:37:45.0, no wetsuit!!... I'm just sayin I felt colder just floating around than I ever did during my last cold water swim.

I'm a bit surprised that people are promoting the "swim unprotected" and "ignore the research" position here. I'm all for individuals doing it "their way" but this is a public board. People come here for advice.

Sorry, I didn't realize my correcting the facts would lead to a thread-jack.

As a former swimmer, instructor, swim coach, and life-guard:

KNOW YOUR LIMITS. 

Don't think for a second that you are superman (or wonderwoman or aquaman) and can survive a cold water/rough water situation without the right gear and protection. 

KNOW YOUR LIMITS. 

100 % Agreed, and sorry if this was a threadjack.  I'd encourage all the former swimmers and non swimmers increase their H20 competency in this "offseason", test out gear and tolerances in training rather than during the Big Dance.  Ultimately, each of us may all be on our own (hope not).

My deepest sympathies to the decedent, and esp. to the family and friends left behind.  Just 24, yikes, so so sad.  Very much a tragic loss, and the more I read about it, the more bummed out I'm getting.

Darwin would say no wet suit and no PFD and you get what you pay for.

Greg is right in terms of advice for beginners.  I have fished with him, PJ, ABKing, Ykauza, Dog Pound and we all fish in some very remote and isolated areas.  I am also sure the same is true for Bluekayak as I have read his posts for years.  We all know what we are getting into out there and have our own experience and knowledge to rely on.  

In terms of people looking for advice, this news makes it too clear.  Dress to be warm and dry or you risk your life.  

How’s that for the picture of politeness

Fair enough. When it comes to key safety issues, it's always in the back of my head that noobs come here for advice. I felt obligated to say something.

KNOW YOUR LIMITS is probably the best advice given in this thread so far. And it’s important to understand that if you have never directly tested your limits, or your equipment’s limits, you don’t know them. I know I didn’t. Not until a crappy borrowed yak sank out in the middle of nowhere.

When it comes to key safety issues, it's always in the back of my head that noobs come here for advice. I felt obligated to say something

Littoral, I still remember reading your initial post in a thread about floatation foam in kayaks:

I had a borrowed  kayak sink underneath me offshore once. It had a leak that my "friend" who I had borrowed it from was unaware of. After two hours slowly taking on water it reached a point where it dawned on me that my body weight wasn't really affecting the trim of the boat anymore. I paddled in like a mad man, made it another fifty yards and down she went. First time out, no wetsuit, 50o water and no one saw me go down. It was a very long, cold,  lonely swim. As I dragged myself onto the rocks on shore the fire dept showed up. It took 30 minutes with heat-packs in my armpits to stop the hypothermic shaking.

I can assure you that in chop or any swell at all there is a point, long before the hull is completely filled, where it is no longer possible to stay on top of the yak. The swell comes up over the deck and keeps rising up to your chest and beyond. The buoyancy of the yak cannot react fast enough to the momentum created by the rising and falling water. The yak drops off the back of the swell and accelerates down to the trough and continues down as the face of the next swell overtakes you. I seriously doubt that a few pool noodles could affect this dynamic in all but the most ideal conditions. Although my experience was extreme, in real-world off-shore conditions I tend to think that big chunks of foam would be necessary. A good bilge pump might have saved the boat too

My 2 cents anyway.

I thought to myself then, how close was that guy to not making it. 

I appreciated your input on the current thread.  As Odat's recent mishap at OAP illustrated, noobs do seek info from this site and your concern for them could, one day, save a life.

BK and Yak, you guys are animals!!

Z

I appreciated your input on the current thread.  As Odat's recent mishap at OAP illustrated, noobs do seek info from this site and your concern for them could, one day, save a life.

It's the strangest thing to realize your boat is going down way out there. The only thing I was sure of was that it was up to me, nobody was coming to save me. I learned a lot that day.

On a lighter note, another lesson learned from that mishap; if you're going to sink a boat, do it off Cambria. When surf rescue got to me they immediately put me in dry clothes and told me to go ahead and keep them.  A pair of Levi's and an LL Bean sweatshirt. They were brand new and fit me perfectly. I still wear them to this day.

I flipped trying to go out in Cambria real bad one time.  I got crushed by my kayak.  Funny thing was thirty minutes later there was almost no swell.  Any way, I was wearing a rain suit and my pfd.  I lost my paddle and the side current was taking it quickly towards the rocks so (stupidly) I dove in swam out and retrieved it.  Problem is that after a hundred yard swim I almost couldn't breath or protect myself from being slammed on the rocks.  I got lucky and landed on sand between some boulders.  About twenty people were watching, and one guy thanked me because he was teaching his children about wearing pfd's.  I thought that was funny cause he was sincere.
It seemed like a near death experience it was so cold.  I made it out luckily and had a great day.  Even though I was freezing.