The Ladder to Success

Winter 2009

The assisted ladder rescue offers a mashup of more established techniques that could help nervous swimmers

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.

To view a copy of the entire magazine online, click here: WINTER 2009 WAVELENGTH MAGAZINE

by Alex Matthews

Establish contact with the capsized kayak’s bow, creating a ‘T’ formation.

Haul the capsized boat across your lap, allowing the water to drain from the cockpit.

Rotate the emptied boat upright, and grip it securely in your lap.

The swimmer can now straddle the stern of his kayak and climb up it to regain his cockpit.

Dropping his butt into the seat, the swimmer pulls his legs in, reattaches his spraydeck, and grips his paddle, ready to be slid back into the water.

The ‘ladder’ is a rescue that seems to have sea kayakers talking lately. It is fundamentally one of many variations of the well-established bow-tip-out rescue. In fact, it is sort of a mashup of the “bow-tip-out” (see Wavelength Fall 2007 issue) with the “cowboy scramble” (April-May 2006 issue).

To perform the ladder, start with a traditional bow tip-out rescue setup: the rescuer approaches the bow of the capsized kayak and positions himself perpendicular to the inverted boat to create a ‘T’ formation.

Secure a good grip on the capsized boat’s bow by committing your weight onto the overturned hull. Even upside down, a kayak has plenty of flotation and will easily support you (this is assuming that the capsized kayak has appropriate flotation fore and aft – usually in the form of waterproof compartments sealed by bulkheads at both bow and stern). With one hand on the keel, reach across your body with the other and grip the bow’s grab-handle. This will put you in a great position to pull the boat up onto your deck.

By pushing with your top hand toward your bow and pulling with your lower hand gripping the grab-handle it is very easy to rotate the kayak enough to break the suction created by the capsized kayak’s cockpit. You can also direct the swimmer to his stern and have him press down on it by getting his chest up onto the keel. This will raise the bow of the inverted kayak, at which point you can yank it up across your spraydeck.

Once the bow is elevated, water inside the inverted kayak will flow down toward the stern bulkhead and drain out. Next, rotate the kayak back upright.

Here’s the point where the Ladder rescue differs from the traditional bow-tip-out: Instead of pulling the swimmer’s kayak in parallel to your own boat, keep in it your lap with its bow hatch roughly over your cockpit.

The rescuer now hugs the kayak and holds it in the ‘T’ formation with an aggressive grip on the boat and its perimeter lines. The swimmer re-enters starting from the stern (which is nice and low in the water due to the boat’s angle). While straddling the boat with legs spread, the swimmer can climb the ladder of his kayak to regain the cockpit. Once over the seat he drops his butt into the boat and then pulls his legs in afterwards. Once the swimmer’s spraydeck is back on and he’s ready to paddle, the rescuer simply slides the kayak out of his lap, launching it back into the water.

The ladder rescue is especially reassuring for nervous swimmers, as it creates a very stable platform and makes communication between rescuer and swimmer easy. It’s important to note, however, that the ladder is much better suited to kayaks without rudders, as a rudder on the capsized boat will be in the swimmer’s way and make climbing atop the stern far more awkward or even hazardous. In rough conditions the rescuer’s face is also more exposed to injury from the swimmer’s boat than in the more traditional parallel setup.

Adapted from “Sea Kayaking Rough Waters” by Alex Matthews available at www.helipress.com.