Probably not last one reg. Tuesday

From: Eckart Walther (adnovum@rahul.net-DeleteThis)
Date: Fri Apr 11 1997 - 11:48:49 PDT


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Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:48:49 -0700 (PDT)
From: Eckart Walther <adnovum@rahul.net-DeleteThis>
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Reply-To: Eckart Walther <adnovum@rahul.net-DeleteThis>
Subject: Probably not last one reg. Tuesday
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I feel like I have to comment on Mike (Schuh's) critique of the events last
Tuesday, so the people on this list don't take me for a total idiot:

True, I didn't have a strobe (got one now) and it didn't even occur to me
to ask Mike for his. I guess I was just subconsciously denying the fact that
I might have to swim for more than 4 hours. I do, however, always carry a
towing line with me, same length as Mike's. But I gladly took Mike's offer
to give us his, since mine is in the inside pocket of my harness and I would
have had to partly take off my harness to get to it.

I used my spare downhaul to tie my ankle to the back footstrap of my board
when the paddling began in earnest, so there was no danger of me getting
separated from my board. B.T.W. when you find yourself in a situation that
calls for extended paddling, do it surfer-style i.e. arms alternating. I
found out the hardway that this is the only way you can keep up for any
length of time.

Reg. towing: I've towed people in from the channelmarker to the bridge on a
flood with a 4.7 (using my towing line - it's been field tested :) ) and
it took all the strenght I had. Since I've also towed somebody with a 5.5
once I am pretty sure that the difficulty of towing somebody increases
exponetially with the wind strength, not linearly. Ken managed to tow me
for about 20 feet doing 4 waterstarts. Maybe I should have tried to take
the active part but at that time I had already decided that I wanted to
conserve my strenght for paddling.

The mistakes that I made (as I see it now) were:
- not having a strobe. This has been fixed now.
- not explicitly telling Ken and Mike to leave and not even think about
  coming back again. Seem like Ken was at least partially driven to go
  out and look for me by a comment somebody made when he came back to the
  launch (something like "you mean, you LEFT him out there?")
- Not instruct people to call the Coast Guard (I'll always capitalize this
  from now on) and tell them what I thought my position was. Mike and Steve,
  who carried in my boom, of course knew what to do, but I shouldn't have
  taken that for granted.

I'm sure I'll be able to come up with plenty more things I could have done
better in time but these were definitely the Capital one's.

Mike, Ken P. and anyone else who was involved: Ask me for a beer anytime you
see that I brought some. Being a simple soul I can't think of a better way
to thank my fellow windsurfers.

One last thing: This incident will NOT make me get a PFD. At no time I felt
that a PFD would have helped me. A 70l board is plenty of flotation.

Flame away!

Harry



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