Dear gods, the idea of pitchpoling a kayak is terrifying; I've done it in dinghies of course, and it's no fun there, but you're free of the boat and can move around there.
I have faith in my ability to wet exit, but the whiplash you could get from having that experience sounds awful. And, more intimidatingly, that's in the category of holy shit just shouldn't happen. It would feel like something had gone terribly awry with physics. I've kayaked in three foot seas, but nothing like the conditions that some of these people have experienced. I'm wondering if I should hit up that kayaking school on Orcas for one of their rolling/handling surf classes... but most of my experience with choppy water has been river whitewater, not actual seas.
The other really horrible one was the story about the night kayakers on the Hudson, who stupidly thought that they could wave off a freight boat under tow with their flashlights. (Or at all, really. No concept of stopping distance. None.) They are so lucky that they aren't dead.
Kayaks and seas...vatineDecember 16 2009, 00:12:40 UTC
Once, in the Baltic (actually, well within the Stockholm archipelago, some six metres left of a rocky island), I had waves that were high enough that I did not want to take them bow-on, preferring to take a sideways impact. Don't know exactly how high they were, but the crest was higher than my head, before the kayak hit the bottom of the trough. One of my co-paddlers reckoned they were about 1.5 metres top to bottom.
I was Very Very Happy I was on dry land as USS Ticonderoga (CG-47) went past under decent steam, she really pulled up some waves.
Much of it is preparation and staging your future wilderness hideaway...
Hmm. Any wilderness survival and evasion guide that starts off more or less with "first, have everything on hand that you need to survive..." is not going to get high marks from just about anyone with 0.3183 clue or better.
OTOH, sounds like MHI would appeal to my geeks-with-machines side; probably would not pick it up without your review as, well you know my opinion of another fiction/fantasy series in which survival depends on geekiness... the fine details of which the author proceeds to mess up over and over.
Re: survival, yeah. I mean, neither you nor I are going to knock preparedness, but what I was really looking for was the ability to create the things you need in a relatively improvised fashion, and tracking detail past what I already knew. The book does not deliver on either of these... if I'd paged through it in a store, I would have realized that it wasn't the book I was after. Ah, the perils of Internet shopping.
Re: MHI, the author certainly knows more about guns than I do. However, ilcylic (who knows way more about guns than I do) swears for its accuracy on that matter, so I'm willing to take his word for it. Easily half the stuff I had to look up while reading was firearm related, so it was an education for me. You're welcome to borrow my copy if you like, though you'd have to wait a bit for me to stagger out to the post office.
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The other really horrible one was the story about the night kayakers on the Hudson, who stupidly thought that they could wave off a freight boat under tow with their flashlights. (Or at all, really. No concept of stopping distance. None.) They are so lucky that they aren't dead.
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I was Very Very Happy I was on dry land as USS Ticonderoga (CG-47) went past under decent steam, she really pulled up some waves.
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Hmm. Any wilderness survival and evasion guide that starts off more or less with "first, have everything on hand that you need to survive..." is not going to get high marks from just about anyone with 0.3183 clue or better.
OTOH, sounds like MHI would appeal to my geeks-with-machines side; probably would not pick it up without your review as, well you know my opinion of another fiction/fantasy series in which survival depends on geekiness... the fine details of which the author proceeds to mess up over and over.
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Re: MHI, the author certainly knows more about guns than I do. However, ilcylic (who knows way more about guns than I do) swears for its accuracy on that matter, so I'm willing to take his word for it. Easily half the stuff I had to look up while reading was firearm related, so it was an education for me. You're welcome to borrow my copy if you like, though you'd have to wait a bit for me to stagger out to the post office.
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Have you ever read Primitive Wilderness Living & Survival Skills: Naked into the Wilderness? It sounds like it may have more of the information you're after. I'd be willing to loan you my copy.
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