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Common Paddling Hazards

"It's far better to learn from other people's mistakes than to make the same mistakes yourself.

-Moulton Avery

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Learn About Bad Stuff Second-Hand

When it comes to activities where a simple mistake or oversight can get you seriously injured or killed, there's a LOT of bad stuff that you really don’t want to learn about the hard way - by direct personal experience.  In many outdoor recreation activities, serious hazards aren't obvious at all - you have to learn to recognize them in order to avoid getting into trouble.   That's why reading about mistakes that other people have made is so valuable.  That's also why we have a lot of Case Histories with Lessons Learned on our website.  In this section we examine Common Paddling Hazards and the Major Contributing Factors that get paddlers and other small boaters into trouble.

Some Classic Examples of Bad Stuff

  • Getting totally creamed by huge waves and rough water when you paddle the mouth of that little inlet or river.  Ditto paddling in a bay and getting swept out through the inlet and over the bar when the tide changes.

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  • Watching in horror as your kayak does a “Cleopatra’s Needle” or completely fills with water because it had no floatation. Ditto watching your kayak blow away.

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  • Capsizing 100 yards from shore and finding out that the guy who tried to warn you about the danger of cold water really did know what he was talking about.

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  • Getting swept into a tide race or blown offshore even though the TV weather report you watched in the morning said nothing about dangerous tidal currents or small craft advisories.  Ditto falling into a wind or wave shadow trap because you have no idea what they are.

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  • Getting really and truly lost when your trusty GPS runs out of juice, breaks, malfunctions, can’t get a signal – whatever – and it’s getting dark, and cold, and you don’t have a map and compass, and even if you did, you wouldn’t know how to use them.  Ditto getting lost in fog.

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  • Floating around in the dark, shivering and watching the lights of boats and helicopters searching for you but having no way to signal them because you don't have flares, a waterproof flashlight, cell phone, VHF radio, or emergency strobe light.

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  • Getting to the take-out and realizing that Mary is missing – because she capsized 2 miles back and nobody knew it because your group didn’t have a designated sweep.

Learn About Hazards

We group the common paddling hazards faced by open-water paddlers into three categories: Cold Water, Adverse Weather, and Hazardous Waters.  If you understand these hazards, you can avoid them or be prepared for them.  Many close calls and fatalities involve hazards from all three categories.  In addition to hazards, we discuss major contributing factors below. Please note that whitewater kayakers face additional hazards and need knowledge about reading the river and skills that are best learned in a whitewater class.

  • Cold Water

  • Adverse Weather

  • Hazardous Waters

​Cold Water is discussed throughout the site.

 

Adverse Weather

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Lots of paddling advice tells you that you can skip wetsuits or drysuits when paddling on cold water as long as you paddle “close to shore in protected waters”. That's very bad advice because it completely ignores cold shock and important contributing factors like those below. 

Note: Wind is the most common adverse weather problem that paddlers encounter.

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  • Below-Freezing Weather - Additional kayaking hazards occur when air temperatures are below freezing – for example, when paddling on 34F (1.1C) water when the air temperature is 20F (-6.7C). These include 1) Potential for frostbite, especially on your hands if you grip the paddle tightly. 2) Your sprayskirt freezing to the cockpit coaming – which could be fatal in a capsize. 3) Ice forming on primary and spare paddles, buckles, zippers, your knife, and your VHF radio. 4) The kayak deck becoming very slippery, and deck lines freezing to the kayak surface, making it difficult or impossible to hold onto the kayak during a rescue. 4) Your bilge pump becoming inoperable. 5) Your towline freezing into a tangled block of ice.  ​

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Also, especially in swiftly moving water, ice and snow on shore can make getting out of the water a big challenge.  With that last point in mind, Watch this short video from Finland.

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  • Fog - Can you find your way back if you can't see the shore?

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  • Paddling at Night - Ships and motorboats have can have difficulty seeing you in broad daylight - especially when the sun is in their eyes.  But at night, it can be virtually impossible to see you - even though you have lights on your paddlecraft.  Here's an excellent example in which the lights on the kayaks blend in with shore lights and light reflections on the water.

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Hazardous Waters

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  • Currents - Moving water is powerful, and when it interacts with obstructions, conditions can get very rough. It can also pin a boat or person against an obstruction with life-threatening results.  Currents are a significant feature of many hazards discussed in this section.

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  • Low-Head Dams - The slang term for a low-head dam is "drowning machine".  They're well known as one of the worst hazards that you can encounter on a river.

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  • Boat Traffic - Small, human-powered watercraft like kayaks and canoes aren't nearly as visible as larger boats.  They're very easy for motorboats to miss due to glare from sunlight. The speed of large commercial vessels like container ships is often much faster than it appears, their ability to maneuver is frequently confined due to a shipping channel, and they take a very long distance to slow down.  Treat them with extreme caution.

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  • High, Fast, and ColdVideo

Moving water has its own set of hazards, and you have to understand them in order to avoid trouble. When a river current is fast, obstacles come into view quickly and can be hard to avoid. When the river is also running high, water climbs up and often overflows the banks. Take-outs become scarce, and strainers increase in number. Cold water compounds these dangers.

 

This dramatic video features a long, grueling, cold-water swim during which the other paddlers in the group struggle to tow the swimmer to shore or retrieve his kayak and paddle. Even though the swimmer is wearing a drysuit, he's physically and mentally hammered when he's finally able to reach shore.  One rescuer's kayak becomes wedged under a tree and capsizes, but fortunately the boat swings free and the paddler is able to roll up.  Note that the water doesn't look dangerous at the put-in. It takes courage to publicly post a video like this on the internet where anyone can see it, and we should all be grateful to Georgia paddler Shane Newsome for sharing it.

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  • Whitewater - It's wise to learn about whitewater safety before you paddle on a river - even one that doesn't have a lot of rapids.  Many hazards, like foot entrapments, aren't at all obvious so you absolutely have to learn about them in order to avoid them.  If you're interested in whitewater paddling, take a whitewater course.  These are frequently offered by paddlesports retailers and also by ACA and BCU instructors around the country. One of the finest and most comprehensive whitewater safety films ever made was produced in 1977 by the American Red Cross.  After searching for a long time, I was able to find an archival copy and you can watch it here: "The Uncalculated Risk".  As soon as that film was released, I began showing it to my students at the beginning of every flatwater and whitewater canoeing course I taught at Carolina Wilderness Instituteand it never failed to give me goosebumps.   As you'll notice in the film, the equipment used by whitewater paddlers has evolved a lot.  What hasn't changed are the hazards.

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  • Whitewater Rafting - Commercial whitewater rafting can be fun and exciting, but rafting is definitely not an amusement park ride.  Think of it as a moderate-to-high-risk wilderness adventure. If things go badly wrong, you could die.

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  • Surf - Like whitewater, surf has its own dynamic and its own set of hazards.  Unless you want to get thrashed, get some personal instruction before you venture into surf.  It's a lot more effective than watching YouTube videos.

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Moderate Surf at Manzanita Beach, Oregon

Timing Really Matters

Ocean surf arrives in "sets", which are groups of waves.  Some sets are larger than others, so timing your launch from a beach is best done in the short, quieter period between sets.  Even small breaking waves like the ones in the video linked below have a lot of power, and it's easy to get hurt if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time when trying to launch. This video is an excellent, if somewhat comical example of what happens when your timing is bad. The first kayaker gets off the beach with no trouble, but his buddy isn't nearly as fortunate.   Kayak Launch Fail 

Bottom Line

Objective hazards are a fact of life in outdoor recreation. Lots of paddlers encounter cold water, adverse weather, and hazardous waters without getting into trouble. In fact, many paddlers deliberately seek out and play in those conditions.  Problems most often arise because of poor judgement, complacency, overconfidence, lack of knowledge and preparation, and inadequate gear.

Major Contributing Factors
Major Contributing Factors

Now let's expand our view and look at twelve Major Contributing Factors.  We see these things again and again when analyzing close calls and fatalities. They are mistakes that you don't have to make and situations that you can practice and prepare for. They are things you can control.  When you read our Case Histories, you'll notice that at the end of each case, we list the contributing factors that apply to that incident.​

  • No PFD (Lifejacket)

  • Not Dressed For Water Temperature

  • Unable To Recover From Capsize

  • Unable to Call For Help

  • Unaware of Hazards

  • Being Complacent / Overconfident

  • Lack of Weather Awareness

  • Unable To Deal With Wind and Waves

  • Poor Navigation Skills

  • No Light - Invisible At Night

  • Poor Group Management

  • Paddling Solo

Highlights

I want to highlight the first three things on that list because they account for a large number of fatalities.  We cover the importance of the first two under Golden Rule 1 and Golden Rule 2 , so let me emphasize “Unable To Recover From Capsize”.

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The ability to smoothly and quickly get back into your canoe, kayak, surfski, or back onto your paddleboard is a fundamental safety skill, because if you can't do it, you have to swim or be towed to shore - or even worse, wait for someone to come and rescue you. It's not enough to just read about rescues or watch them on YouTube - or even take a rescue class.  Rescues have to be practiced over and over until you can do them quickly and smoothly without thinking them through step by step.

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Canoe or decked kayak rescues take a lot more practice than sit-on-top kayak or paddleboard rescues.  Rescues are also a lot harder to do on your own than when another paddler is helping you out.  Also, if your kayak or canoe doesn't have flotation, pumping or bailing it out may be impossible, and it will be far more difficult for an assisted rescue.

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No forward bulkhead or flotation.

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Canoe with no flotation

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Canoe with lots of flotation.

Whitewater Rafting

 

The danger is even greater if the water is cold and you aren't wearing a wetsuit or drysuit (safety gear that should have been supplied by the raft company).  When your breathing is out of control because of cold shock and your ability to hold your breath is shot, inhaling water is very likely.  Whitewater paddlers even have a special name for this: Flush Drowning.

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Submerged by waves.

Lots of fun until it isn't.

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One second you're up, the next you're swimming.

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Capsizes can be violent.

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Bad spot for a swim.

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Do you see the paddle?

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The view from underwater.

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Commercial whitewater rafting can be fun and exciting, but rafting is definitely not an amusement park ride.  Think of it as a moderate-to-high-risk wilderness adventure. If things go badly wrong, you could die.  Google "rafting carnage" to get a small idea of what can go wrong.  Getting trapped underneath a raft is not a fun experience and neither is desperately trying to get a breath of air while being repeatedly submerged as you're violently flushed through big rapids.

Spectators gather to watch the carnage at Pillow Rock on the Gauley River, West Virginia.

Whitewater Rafting
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Aspen Outfitting Photo

Safety Note: If you decide to go rafting with a commercial outfitter and the water is cold (below 70F), ask if they supply wetsuits or rent them.  If their answer is no, and you don't have your own thermal protection, find another outfitter that has more experience and concern for your safety.

© National Center for Cold Water Safety 2012-2025 Contact Us

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