• Happy Weed Appreciation Day! 🌱🌿🌻

Teen drowns in Minnesota

Joined
Feb 13, 2014
Messages
142
Reaction score
3
Location
minnesota
This is from news article today:
A teenager has died in a kayaking accident on a Douglas County lake.

Sheriff's deputies say the mother of the 15-year-old boy called authorities from Wild Ridge Campground near Alexandria Sunday shortly before 5 p.m. after her son failed to return from kayaking after four hours had passed.

A conservation officer and volunteers began searching for Brennon Johnson. The boy was found in his capsized kayak on the northwest side of the lake about an hour later. Authorities say he was still wearing his life jacket and apparently couldn't make it out of the capsized kayak.
 
Tragic but I have difficulty figuring out how he could not make it out of his capsized kayak. Waiting further info.. its often that initial stories are not quite right. I've taught wet exits for kayakers for years. Unless something else is involved, like status epilepticus, immediate medical emergency involving unconsciousness, a prosthetic leg ( the latter did prevent a wet exit by a trip participant but we compensated by having extra safety kayakers) or a spinal injury , wet exits happen naturally.

The article mentions accidental drowning. There is something more going on here.
 
Sunday was a perfectly calm day. Hard to imagine a kayak or canoe capsizing in calm water (tho i know it can happen). I do know that on some lakes here in Minnesota, boaters have been know to harasse kayakers/canoes by running circles around them to cause waves. So who knows..........
 
Perhaps he was in a white water kayak. Wet exits are not automatic in white water kayaks. Something as simple as not being able to locate the grab loop on his skirt or accidentally putting the skirt on with the loop hanging inside the cockpit. Even having shoes that are too big can impede exit. If you can get the skirt off, one will usually get flushed out in short order, but if inexperienced people get hung up trying to exit, they sometimes "freak out" and stop thinking about what's going on. All of the sea kayaks I've been in have been similar so that one can stay in the boat and roll it. All of this would be harder to qualify if the young man was in a typical rec type kayak. They have huge cockpits. Tragic indeed.


Barry
 
Back
Top