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Wanted to post this not to bash DIYpackraft, but to raise awareness.
I have been paddling my huge tandem Voyageur packraft for almost two years down all sorts of rivers, back and forth to my boat when anchored in Alaska, hauling deer back to my boat, catching king and coho salmon from it, hauling hundreds of pounds of sockeye, adult men, and many many days with my wife/kid in it. I totally trusted this thing.
Today we anchored my boat in 39 degree water in Alaska, hunting on an island outside of Juneau. We shot two deer, loaded up the Voyageur with two deer, two men, two packs, two rifles, and a dry bag. I was in my V3 DIY packraft. We all paddled to my boat about 100 meters off shore.
I heard a scream and the Voyageur was rapidly deflating. Two friends clutching to the inflatable floor that still was in it. One had a life vest on, the other didn’t. Both were totally screwed in 39 degree water about 50-60 meters from shore. I spun around, paddled back, and pulled them back to shore…..barely. It was almost impossible to pull them.
We all had dry clothes in dry bags, all survived, but it was VERY close. You die really quick in the ocean when it’s 39 degrees. They were in the water for five minutes and almost to the point of being incapacitated.
Lessons: Don’t over-inflate then over load your packraft. Take your time building it, be sure it’s bomber. And don’t paddle alone or without a life vest. You need a back up plan or you’ll just die.
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It failed on the yellow/blue seam shown in the pic in this post. Right below the guys butt. It failed on the inboard aspect of the boat.
I spoke with him today and apparently he was fidgeting around quite a bit with legs/hips, and he feels he put too much outward pressure on that seam. The guy paddling in this photo is light, it didn’t fail in this pic. It failed with the other guy sitting on the stern and I guess he sort of wiggled in deeper and it blew about 8cm.
I feel like the failure was our fault and we exceeded the limits of the packraft. Like I said, I’ve had my 8 year old in this for countless hours. We used it so much. Whenever we were in cold water though, I always had a back up packraft with someone in it for this very reason. In 60 degree summer ocean temps you can survive quite a while, not so much in 39, as you know.
In almost all drownings in AK either alcohol or no life vest is a factor. I always wear my life vest whether on a packraft or our 22′ boat. Always……..
If the packraft had failed in this pic, neither had life vests, we were just leaving the boat. I’m sure they would have both died. No way they’d get back on the boat freezing. We were very lucky.
Hopefully people learn from this. I’m sad about my packraft, but whatever…….
Also went back this morning and retrieved our lost rifle at low tide, so we got all our gear back!
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Thanks for posting this, Derek! We can all be glad that it ended well (more or less) and we can learn from the experience – but man, what a scare! I’m so glad you’re all okay.
Just yesterday I was thinking that maybe I should write a post or make a video about cold weather packrafting, and you’ve spurred me into action. For now, here’s a related cautionary tale:
When I was younger and more foolish than I am now, hanging out by the ocean with some friends on a cold winter’s night, I accepted a challenge to swim to some nearby pilings and back. I was a strong swimmer, having completed life saving courses at my local pool, and I had gone swimming in some pretty cold water before, so I thought it would be easy. I made it to the pilings just fine, slapped one with my hand and turned for shore. About halfway back I was astounded at how quickly my body began to shut down. I had been fine for a minute or so, and after that my brain was still functioning fine (other than getting myself into the situation in the first place), but beginning in my hands and feet my muscles quickly weakened to the point where they barely moved. In a matter of seconds the weakness progressed into my larger muscles as the blood fled from them towards my core, and for the last bit of swimming I was in panic mode, only able to make clumsy, inefficient strokes. Fortunately I reached shore before my limbs ceased to function entirely, but if shore had been much farther away I think I would have been unable to keep my head above water. I shudder to think of the horrible death that would have brought, being fully conscious yet so paralyzed that I’d be unable to stop myself from drowning.
What I learned from this experience is that you can’t rely on endurance or fine motor skills to get you out of a cold water situation. If someone had thrown me a rope my hands would have been too weak to hold on to it, and my fingers would have been unable to tie it around my body. In a packrafting situation, if I hadn’t been wearing my PFD I wouldn’t have been able to unfasten it from the packraft or climb into a boat or anything like that.
Sometimes you’ll see me post pictures or videos of me paddling without a visible PFD, and I should really stop doing that, because what you can’t see is that I’m paddling in conditions where I’m 100% confident I can swim to shore if something goes wrong. Anytime I’m in moving water or the water is too cold to be comfortably submerged in, I’m wearing my drysuit and/or staying so close to shore that I can simply stand up if something goes wrong. Now my early New Year’s resolution is to never again post pictures of someone packrafting without a PFD.
I have more thoughts on this topic, but this is already turning into a long post, so I’ll save the rest for the blog.
Thanks again for posting, Derek. I know your Voyageur was probably over-pressurized when it failed, but I’d still be interested to know exactly where the failure occurred in case there’s a design change that could reduce the risk of something like this happening again. Feel free to email me directly, if you like. Thanks!
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