Once again it was time for this fun local kayak race on the Estero de Americano. The last few years I have volunteered to be "sweep boater" which means hanging around waiting for the last boat to return. This is great for me since I am not a fast kayaker and not competitive in this way. Usually there is nothing else for me to do in my capacity as a "safety boat", but this year we had a calamity. A group of "kids" from the Stanford kayak racing team came to the race. They paddled in narrow, fast, tipsy racing boats. They didn't wear wetsuits, spray-skirts, PFD's or helmets. Presumably these items of safety gear create too much wind resistance and slow you down.
Two of these kids in a double got into trouble on the return trip. There was a strong wind bowing and when the meandering Estero traveled with the wind small waves were fetched up. These little waves were no problem for touring kayaks with spray skirts on, but the water was just high enough to wash into the open cockpits of the racing boat. It had filled up with water, become unstable, and dumped the kids into the drink several times. They would swim the boat to shore, empty it out, and start over, only to have the process start over again.
John Boeschen joined me in trying to help these guys. We had them paddle close to shore, but when the shoreline turned across the end of a long fetch they could not paddle beam to the waves without getting filled up and flipped over again. We tried rafting up with them but then none of us could paddle effectively. We would have tried towing them but toggles are apparently another source of drag and these racing boats have no way to attach a tow line to them. The two kids were getting cold and tired and wanted to walk home with their boat so we let them try carrying it over the hills for a while.
We sent several boats ahead to bring back some warmer clothes for the two racers, who were wearing wet spandex dive skins. Their coach arrived in a double kayak with John Dixon just as our hikers came over the first hill carrying their kayak. We coaxed them back into the water. Then John showed us how to tow a racing boat. He attached the towline to my boat and had me raft up to the kid's boat. I was able to use both arms to hold onto the tipsy double and stabilize it. From the double John and the coach were able to quickly tow us back to the start.
There is a large loop near the start that you can sometimes shortcut. This year the water was almost high enough and there were only a few centimeters of muddy soil to clamor over. John towed us across the shortcut, which slowly got shallower and shallower until we all got out of our boats to portage the last few meters. The two cold wet racers were told to get into John's large stable double while he and their coach would paddle the racing boat the last few hundred meters. Standing in a few centimeters of water the two kids did not realize that the boat they were supposed to get into right next to them was in two meters of water. They stepped over to get into it and fell into water over their heads one more time! After everyone was finally back in their boats we raced the last stretch to the finish line.