Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Rescue spotted!

Van Kajaksport op groot water

Image quality isn't brilliant, but when you click on the picture you can see a capsized seakayaker being rescued. This was last week during the TKBN Opleidingstocht. Dutch coastguard made the picture - with a large telescope from the coast-guard station in top of the lighthouse "het Westhoofd". The surf on the sand bar is about a nautical mile out at sea - distance to the lighthouse about 2 kms. "Big brother is watching you" - don't mind, in the contrary: I think it's a safe idea that the coastguard keeps in eye on our kayak activities. But it's also a good argument to inform the coastguard about your activities (which is good use in the Netherlands!) - so the coastguard knows about your plans and isn't surprised by swimming seakayakers when you are training rescues. Please do prevent false alarms!

Thanks to the lighthouse crew for mailing this picture!

4 comments:

COBBER said...

Hans,

I thought paddlers wanted to escape the real world for a while and wanted to be unseen...wrong again.

We had last weekend the annual rescuedrills also at the club. Many participants and many learning experiences as always.

regards Jörgen

Hans Heupink said...

Hi Jörgen!

The Netherlands: 16,493,156 people at 41,526 sq km (density 396 /km2).
Forget the idea of travelling unseen in this country. There is no escape!

But I am sure none of the paddlers was aware of the coastguard keeping an eye on the group ;-)

Feelings and facts...
greetings,
Hans

Anonymous said...

If you really zoom in on the picture you can see clearly that the kayakker being rescued has a bright face.

Mrs. Selser said...

...bright red, that is.