Cold Water Rescue, February 2009, NYC

Saturday afternoon the air temperature was mercifully warm (45 degrees F) when we set out to do our cold water rescue class. The water temperature, however, was about 38 painful degrees.

We had the proper gear, a trained instructor and were working in a semi-enclosed embayment. We were reasonably safe but still very apprehensive. We’re not stupid; we knew this was going to suck.

Our dry-suits are completely waterproof from the tips of our toes, to the latex gaskets around our necks and wrists. Inside our waterproof cocoon we were all wearing several layers of high-tech thermal clothing. As we were going to be spending more time in the water and less time exercising on top of it, we layered up extra thick.

Our first drill was self-rescues. Warren, our coach, asked for a volunteer and I went first. I talk the most crap in our group, so I figured I should be the first one in the cold.

This wasn’t my first time head-under in the frozen river this winter; my first had been unintentional a few weeks earlier and had been a big motivator for this class. So I was braced for what was coming, but that didn’t make it any less painful.

It’s hard to describe what it feels like to plunge your whole body, head first, into such freezing cold water. It doesn’t feel like cold, it just hurts. It’s pain that comes at you from every angle. I think of it like millions of frozen hammers beating on every nerve ending. I could do without it.

We all did our self-rescues easy as pie. Our next exercise was an assisted rescue. Once again, I went first. Honestly, I don’t remember who did my rescue; I think it was Johna. Then I rescued James. Presumably James rescued Johna. That’s when we heard an emergency whistle.

I looked over, expecting to see Warren signaling for us to come back in for some customary verbal abuse. What I did see was Warren in the water, floating several feet away from his boat. I raced over and made two errors. First, I went after his boat before going for him. Second, I used the wrong tow line to grab his boat and found myself a bit tangled.

Luckily by the time I got his boat to him, Warren had instructed the rest of the crew to pull their boats together to create a little raft for him to lie on and get out of the water.

For our next assisted rescue, we did what’s called a seal rescue. Warren demonstrated by having Howard fall out of his boat. Warren pulled Howard’s boat up on top of his own creating a “t” shape. With the boats like that, it was extremely stable and Howard was able to stand up on top to get comfortably back in his boat. Then he slipped back into the water, like a content little seal.

Ted and I tried this with me as the rescue victim. It was an odd feeling to be standing on the hull of a kayak in the water, but not at all a precarious feeling.

The next exercise was what we call an Eskimo assist. This means that if you accidentally flip over, you reach your hands above the surface of the water and slap at the bottom of your boat (remember, you’re upside down) then wave your hands in the air. Someone should then paddle over to you and put the very front of their boat in your hand. You use the front of their boat to pull yourself back up.

An Eskimo assist is really easy in summer when the water is warm. You can stay down there waving your arms for quite a while before you have to give up and bail out of the boat.

None of us got to Warren in time, though, and he bailed out of his boat. Johna and I both came in to rescue him, but she was better positioned so I stepped aside to let her do it. Clearly wanting to give the crew a second chance, Warren called for me to flip.

“Okay guys, are you ready to…” I started, but Warren was evidently looking for reaction time.

“Flip! Flip Now!”

I grabbed a quick breath and over I went. Up until now I had been cheating: popping my spray-skirt before I flipped over to minimize my time with my head under the water. This time my job was to hold it there. I flipped, tucked my paddle under my arm, slapped the bottom of the boat and started to wave my arms.

The cold was all-encompassing. The dry-suit doesn’t cover your head and the cold becomes the whole world. I spent enough time in the “come get me” position when I was learning to do an Eskimo roll (the unassisted version) that I’m pretty comfortable upside down under water. But the cold was excruciating, relentless, and very urgent.

I’m not sure how long I was under there before I hit that “hurry up” point. In summer, that point comes when you realize your air supply is getting low. This weekend it came like a roll of thunder saying “dude, this is TOO COLD.” I waved my arms faster in the universal signal of “hurry the fuck up!”

I always hate to bail when I’m waiting for an Eskimo assist; I always feel like I’m just a second away from being rescued. So when I finally did decide to give up, my hands felt like two slabs of frozen bacon. (Just decidedly less delicious.) I may have uttered an off color word or two when my head came out of the water. I could have held my breath much longer, but I’d definitely reached my limit for cold.

Here’s where it gets interesting. All of the drills we’d done so far, I hadn’t been in a huge hurry to get out of the water. This time I really, really wanted to be back in my boat. I was really, really cold.

I still had enough perspicacity to argue with Ted a little about rescue technique. So desperate I was, however, to get out of the water that I jumped up on my boat before he was ready, filling my cockpit with water. I definitely see the value in dumping the water out; it was freezing cold and made the boat extremely unstable.

As I limped my poor, flooded boat back to the dock, I was breathing really hard. Evidently that’s not a symptom of hypothermia, so it might have just been the adrenaline. Still, I could see my breath and it was 45 degrees out. Weird.

On the dock is when the shivering started. Not too violent, but noticeable to me. That’s when I asked to borrow James’ hat and sat Indian-style to conserve heat in my legs and make a little tent with my spray-skirt. This was mild hypothermia. My coach later told me that my face was pale and my lips slightly blue.

I felt oddly sluggish for a while after we got off the floating dock. I noticed we were all particularly clumsy putting our boats away, forgetting to take off hatch covers, sponge them dry, or putting them in backwards. Also, very oddly, I was having a bit of trouble talking. I was stammering pretty badly. My brain wasn’t going faster than my mouth (which sometimes happens) but I would just trip over a word. I’d go to say “what do you want to eat for dinner?” but I just couldn’t get past “what” and would repeat it several times before I could move forward. It was an odd sensation.

Anyway, I felt much more normal once we were in the hot locker room, though my stammering persisted until we were walking in search of a restaurant. I started feeling much better as soon as I got some meat and potatoes in me.

Sunday afternoon I had a bit of an itch in my throat that seems to have become an ugly little cough. But it’s not getting any worse and I have no other symptoms, so it may just be the cold that was going around Pittsburgh .

Anyway, I know Warren was in the water for longer than I was, but he’s inherently tougher. Plus he’s got that thick, wooly facial hair to keep him warm.