Venue: Rollingview Community Building at Falls Lake.
This free workshop (with optional portion, fee $5) on cold water safety will be held on Saturday, March 8, and substitutes for our regular meeting on the second Monday. Why a cold water workshop? Because some of us paddle on warm winter days here on our local lakes. and some of us paddle on summer vacation at locations with cold water year round -- Maine, the Pacific NW, California. Here in central NC a kayaker's death at Falls Lake in January 2011 and a recent motorboater's death at Jordan in winter were directly attributable to cold water and inappropriate dress. A balmy 70-degree winter day can lure us onto the 45-degree water dressed in shorts and T-shirt or sweatshirt. That can be a setup for disaster.
Our workshop will be led by Moulton Avery, founder and head of the National Center for Cold Water Safety. We'll start indoors at the Rollingview Community Building with Moulton's presentation. Next we'll walk over to the lake shore. Optional: Those who want to swim test their wetsuits and drysuits will get in the water (likely to be in the 50s). (Bring your wet or drysuit if you want to swim test. There are restrooms on site for changing clothes.) Those who stay on land will be buddies/spotters/appreciative spectators for swimmers. Also we'll provide some buckets of lake water so that folks on land, if they choose, can stick their hands in and see how cold water actually feels -- and how disabling to muscles it can be. (Good chance to test your winter paddling gloves with your hands in a bucket of cold water -- bring your gloves!) Finally, we'll go back inside to wrap up the session with observations on our experience and the take-home message on safe paddling on cold water.
The indoor portion of this workshop is free and open to all paddlers. It is intended to be a service by CKC to the NC paddling community. NOTE: Swim testers will be covered by the club's ACA insurance -- at no charge to participants who are ACA members and bring their number; and for $5 payable on site by participants who are not ACA members.
Let's spread the word about cold water hazards -- and cold water safety!
if you have questions, contact Ginger Travis before March 7, or Camille Warren, or Frank Ladd.