Today was our much-anticipated first drysuit session! Up here, the water is a balmy 41 degrees Fahrenheit, which can make practicing tricky. To let us learn and play without fear of hypothermia, we train in drysuits. Over the course of training, we'll do six total drysuit sessions. Today was session number one, and it included basic strokes, balance exercises, and assisted re-entry.
My first takeaway: being able to stay dry when submerged in cold water is very weird. Also, you should double-check your zippers are all the way closed, or you might get a bit damp.
A big highlight for me was getting to practice assisted re-entry. Our procedure resembles the one discussed here, for those interested. Basically:
Get the swimmer to keep hold of kayak and paddle. This also serves to tell them you saw them capsize and are coming to help.
Flip the boat back to right-side-up, without worrying about how much water is in there.
Orient the swimmer on the opposite side of their boat from you. So in a line you have swimmer-their boat-rescuer.
Use your two paddles and a good lean to strongly brace their boat. It's going to be unstable, since there's so much water in it. Brace aft of their cockpit – more on that later.
Place the swimmer's hands on the bracing paddles, then explain the next step briefly.
On a count of three, two things happen. The swimmer flutter-kicks their legs to the surface and kicks their chest onto the boat, aft of the cockpit. The rescuer helps them by pulling on their PFD.
The swimmer slots one leg, then the other into their cockpit. This is where orientation becomes important. If their chest is already aft, their legs will fit right in where they usually do. If it's in front of the cockpit, though, it'll be impossible to get their legs in the boat correctly.
The swimmer is now lying on their stomach, with legs and midsection inside the cockpit. Slowly and staying low, they rotate towards the rescuer until they are seated as usual.
Continuing to brace, the rescuer grabs the swimmer's bilge pump and tells the swimmer to start pumping. This serves two purposes: it improves the boat's stability by getting rid of all that water, and it starts to warm the swimmer up after a very cold bath.
Help the swimmer reattach their skirt and assess your options from there!
And a major thing I'm still working on? Keeping composed when I'm upside-down underwater. I was astonished how disorienting it is to be underwater in a skirt, even when you're anticipating it. Next time, I hope to do a better job leaning forward to bang on my boat and detach my spray skirt.