inflatable kayak mishap
Finally, we took the kayak for a trial run. The place was Carmel River Beach in, well, Carmel. There was a little bit of swell but nothing too bad.
We planned out our Kayaking adventure. We are suppose to get on the edge of the kelp forest and go dive until we get our fill of the area not going far from the kayak, then to try another place and do exactly what we did before and so on and so forth.
After inflating the kayak (it took less than 10 minutes)in the parking area, we were ready to carry my precious (borrowing from the Lord of the Rings) to the sea. We put our gear on it, fins up front, paddles strapped on the side, dive belts infront of the seats, and yes the spear guns strapped onto the same d-rings as the our straps for the paddles. We got suited up and were ready.
We carry the kayak a bit heavy at about 100lbs with weighs and gear on top. We manage to get it by the water. I noticed that once in a while the swell produced a big enough wave to give us some trouble but my spearfishing partner suggested that it was ok. So alright, I agreed. We pull the kayak on the water, he gets on, I push it, and what happens next was absolutely incredible! From out of the blue A big wave suddenly came up, I yell WAVE!!! Too late! The diveyak flips over, with a spearo on it, and the gears scattered. My fear was someone might have been accidentally jabbed by the spearguns (with no cap on the tips). Luckily, no one was hurt (especially me), so we start gathering all the floating and none floating gears. We found everything but my old dive knife. We then pulled the kayak back into dry land thankful that we were lucky not losing more. But then i saw the kayak. One of the bladder had deflated. Further examination revealed that it was punctured, by one of the spearguns. :waterwork :head.
Lesson learned from this mishap.
1) When in doubt, do not launch kayak (waves can cost some heartache or worse)
2) Do not strap spearguns onto the kayak if you do decide to launch it on a not so flat day. Maybe you can tow a dive bouy or a boogie board behind it until you get to calmer waters. If you do decide to strap on the spearguns on the inflatable diveyak use caps for the shaft tips.
3) Clip everything in. Don't just use the straps. :duh Luckily my camera was clipped on and i didn't loose it. My car key was also and was still there. However, everything else where scattered. even the equipment that were strapped down and took us about an hour to find everything, but the knife.
4) On Sundays, go to church first before launching.
This will be an ongoing experiment and will add on to this list later after I patch the hole and find some more mistake one can make on one of these beauties. So no test yet, next week will go again. To sum it all I will up, I consider this mishap's cause "operator error" :head and will chalk it up to experience.
'Til next time:hmm