Sea kayakers rescued by coastguard after pressing SOS button

A family in Washington state was rescued from the icy waters of the bay on Monday after their sea kayaks were swamped by high winds and waves near Lummi Island. Officials from the U.S. Coast Guard Bellingham Station, which coordinated the successful rescue, said the group’s use of a Garmin inReach was “critical” to their speedy recovery.

USCG Lt. Terrel Sisk, the commander who oversaw the rescue, explains Living outside that they first received an SOS signal from the family’s Garmin inReach around 4 p.m. The entire operation took just over an hour and rescuers had the family back on dry land by 5:15 p.m. No one in the party was seriously injured, but some were. on the brink of hypothermia by the time rescuers arrived.

“If they stayed in that water any longer, we would definitely be dealing with a different case,” Sisk said.

While there are some lessons to be learned from the family’s experiences on Bellingham Bay, the USCG emphasized in a Facebook message that the adults in the group were experienced rowers. The group consisted of four adults, a child and a small dog. They were all wearing life jackets, including the dog. While paddling in two three-seat sea kayaks about a mile west of Lummi Island, the group was overwhelmed by strong winds, kicking up three- to five-foot waves that quickly swamped their boats.

“As soon as they got to that part where the wind picked up, things started to go wrong,” Sisk explains. “Now people are in the water and panic is starting to set in… and they couldn’t get the water out of their boats fast enough. As soon as they would take the water out of one of the kayaks, the next wave of wind would fill the water again.”

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None of the kayaks were recovered, Sisk said, because rescuers focused on getting the family out and the boats were too long to easily bring on board. It is unclear whether the rowers wore spray skirts (also called spray decks), which prevented water from entering the boats.

Regardless, Sisk says they could have been much better prepared with cold-water immersion equipment. Some wore neoprene shirts or wetsuits, which Sisk said provided some warmth as they waited in the 50-degree water, but they should have worn drysuits instead.

“The child was wearing a neoprene shirt, but that was the type of clothing you would wear if you are not planning to go into the water,” he said.

This boils down to two main rules for what to wear while kayaking: always dress according to the water temperature and not the air temperature, and always be prepared for a dive.

One of the adults in the group pressed the SOS button on their inReach immediately after the boats flooded. Sisk says the adults were able to get the dog and child back into the water-filled kayaks while they remained in the water waiting for rescue.

All kayakers should learn and practice self-rescue techniques so they are prepared if they capsize, and anyone recreating on the open sea should check detailed wind and weather forecasts. According to Sisk, this incident only shows that conditions on the water can change quickly and that it is always more difficult to perform under pressure.

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“You can go through these recovery procedures yourself if you are in a nice, closed environment,” says Sisk. “But when you add other people and they panic, it’s different.”