With Flare
Most of us carry signaling devises, including flares. Few of us have actually fired them or know if we could handle them with paddling gloves on. So, some of us went over to the South Shore Yacht Club last evening and participated in their annual flare shoot. A fire boat was available but not needed as there was little wind and folks were careful.
There were two stations, one for aerial flares.
Sherri also went to the hand held station and, along with one of the participants, help light up and stink up the place.
Interestingly, all but one of these aerial flares failed to fire, and I will never carry them again. More interestingly, all my gun-launched flares fired even though some were years out of date.
Paddle safe...
DS
4 comments:
that is interesting. The only time I carry flares is paddling Alaska for the school I teach for. hand flares and aerial flares, but not gun launched.
very interesting indeed.
PO
We carry flares though keeping them withing reach and dry enough is a challenge.
We used to have flare demo days with the Shetland coastguard when we could do similar activities but this is no longer allowed as far as I know.
I don't know of any kayaker here having gun launched flares though. Just parachute and hand day/night flares.
I switched to carrying the gun only because how large the failure rate is with the hand launched flares.
I have not sprung the $$ for a laser flare yet but I would like to experiment with it's usefulness.
I carry a 12 gauge gun and 6 or 7 flares in a dry bag in the lower pouch of my hydration pack on my pfd. The bag is tethered to my pfd, and the gun is tethered to the bag. Can get to it without taking the pfd off. Always with me!
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