When BC’s boating and paddling season starts in earnest, usually in June, the seawater temperature around Victoria and Vancouver averages 9.6°C; in Prince Rupert it’s somewhat higher at 11°C. Water temperatures range between these two numbers throughout our province’s waterways regardless of season. Even during the warmest month—August—the temperature rarely rises above 13°C except when you anchor close to a waterfall or a river’s outflow.
Our normal body temperature hovers around 37°C (98.6°F), so it’s obvious the 26°C to 28°C difference between us and the water can be catastrophic if we are submerged for any length of time. Hypothermia occurs when our body’s core temperature falls below 35°C (95°F).
Even in much warmer waters one can eventually suffer from hypothermia. When sailing in French Polynesia’s atolls with their 28°C waters, we wore light wetsuits when we dove or snorkeled for more than an hour—the 9°C differential can still lead to feeling very chilled. There’s no set time for when hypothermia will set in, but naturally, the colder the water, the faster your body temperature will dip.
Who Ends Up in the Water?
According to boat safety experts, capsize is the most common cause for people to end up in the water, especially for smaller, open boats with only one or two persons aboard. Standing up to reel in a fish can easily unbalance a boat. Combined with weather events, commercial fishboat overloading has caused many to keel over. I read an online story about two men dying after each had bolted an electric engine to their kayak not designed for such an addition. All of us can, of course, fall off our recreational vessel due to a sudden wave, tripping over a line, or during a turbulent yacht race. Jokes about finding unzipped drowned men are rife, but all safe-boating guides urge us to use the head.
Kayakers can roll over or ship enough cold water to grow hyperthermic while seated in their craft. I once observed a flare fired off at dusk on a November afternoon. Using the binocs, I saw the kayaker who’d sent off the flare but was too cold to paddle. I called the local SAR and the kayaker survived after spending days in hospital. I always cringe when spying a paddleboarder in shorts and T-shirt out alone as sudden waves or roaring runabouts’ wakes can upend them.
Cold Water Shock
In the Essentials of Sea Survival, co-author Michael Tipton writes, “If you are lucky enough to survive long enough to die of hypothermia, you have done very well; most die in the first minute of immersion.” Many search-and-rescue and Coast Guard personnel teaching classes on water safety use that phrase.
Why do people die in the first minute of immersion? When hitting cold water, your blood vessels contract (vasoconstriction) and you hyperventilate. This gulping of air is instinctive—it’s something not easily stopped. It’s called cold water shock. If you slide underwater while experiencing it, you suck in water and drown. Cold shock can also raise blood pressure significantly so for those with heart trouble or high blood pressure, this sudden stress can lead to a fatal heart attack. Especially if you’ve forgotten to don your PFD!
I witnessed this second-hand. Awakening at 04:00 hours when RCMP and SAR boats shone bright lights just outside the rocks by our house, I learned two young, fit guys had gone for an evening kayak and were reported missing. It was rumoured they sat on their PFDs. No one knows exactly what happened. Capsize? Cold shock? Hypothermia? We never knew as they weren’t found, likely carried down Juan de Fuca Strait on the ebb.
The 1-10-1 Principle
I found the writings and videos by University of Manitoba thermophysiology professor Gordon Giesbrecht instructive. For his master’s thesis he chose to research hypothermia. Disturbed by the lack of sound survival information and by unnecessary cold-water deaths, he began conducting hundreds of cold water immersion studies—sometime participating himself in icy baths. Eventually he developed the 1-10-1 Principle. It’s a shorthand survival guide—easy to understand and remember.
Giesbrecht first announced his Principle on the Late Show with David Letterman in 2004. This is how he explained the concept: “If you fall in icy water, do not panic and remember you have 1 MINUTE to get control of your breathing, 10 MINUTES of meaningful movement, and 1 HOUR before you become unconscious due to hypothermia.”
Please note, however, that the 1-10-1 Principle is a basic way of assessing risk—keeping your cool—and is not absolute. Water temperature, your size and weight, whether you’re wearing a PFD, have donned a wetsuit or foulies, keep your calm, or your ability to hoist your body onto a floating device, all these profoundly influence your ability to survive. Carrying a VHF radio or a personal EPIRB unquestionably increases your chances of rescue.
That said, the 1-10-1 Principle has had a significant impact by focusing on the actions one should take with sudden cold water immersion. Giesbrecht, who’s become known as an expert on “freezing to death,” has given hands-on seminars to many organizations, including the Canadian and US Coast Guards and to boating clubs and organizations. The US Army uses it as part of its training. He dunked Rick Mercer into a vat of ice water to demonstrate to Canadian audiences how immersion leads to gasping for air. Magazine articles, television shows and other media have informed the public about the Principle. It’s now part of safety-at-sea courses and sailing and boating club curricula. Giesbrecht’s work has earned him the nickname “Professor Popsicle.”
The hands-on training sessions for first responders have become YouTube reality shows—one-by-one, the participants plunge into cold water and experience first-hand what it is to hyperventilate and fight to control breathing. That’s during the first minute or sometimes a bit longer. (And, of course, they wore their PFD which helped keep their head above water—an issue Giesbrecht never tires of repeating.)
After controlling their breathing, trainees discovered how cold water immersion saps energy from the body during the first few minutes, while trying to reach a buoy. As the cold set in, they progressively lost their ability to swim and some needed help from the well-clad rescuers swimming behind them.
Their arms and legs had started losing their muscular functions and their mental functions had slowed down. If they weren’t participating in a training session with boats and rescuers nearby, the trainees would eventually lose their ability to make rational decisions.
In cold water, it’s the limbs that cool first. Intense shivering, the body’s attempt to offset heat loss, occurs next. As the body gets colder, motor coordination decreases, speech slurs, skin grows pale and pupils may dilate. Shivering ceases when the body reaches a temperature of about 32°C, and usually unconsciousness follows.
Saving Yourself
If this were to happen to you with no one to rescue you immediately, the hypothermia experts make the following recommendations. Use them as they fit your circumstances.
Wear an approved PFD. The importance of wearing one at all times cannot be overemphasized. It saves you during cold shock, allows you to float and keeps you from losing heat while forced to tread water and it extends your time in the water.
Dress for immersion. One or more layers of wicking tops and bottoms, thick wool socks. If you capsize your kayak, your spray skirt fails, your small craft turns turtle, or you fall overboard, clothing can help keep your core warmer. Whistles, flares, fluorescent clothing or tape can make you more audible and visible (remember, a “one-foot chop” will hide your head).
If you can, tether yourself to your craft.
Call a Mayday on the VHF’s channel 16 and include your location in case people are nearby. If you carry a personal EPIRB or strobe, activate it. If appropriate, set off a flare.
Don’t swim unless you’re sure you can reach a shore.
Curl your body into the fetal position to minimize heat loss through your groin, torso and head.
If a flotation device is nearby, like a capsized vessel, life ring, or, as we are in BC—a floating tree—hoist yourself up to get your torso out of the water as much as possible.
After the Rescue
If you rescue a hypothermic person from the water, call in on Channel 16 and ask for help. The victim may experience a further cooling of core temperature, called the “after-drop” which can lead to post-rescue collapse.
While awaiting help, strip off wet clothes, place the person in a horizontal position, isolate the limbs, turn on your heater full-blast, surround him/her with warmed blankets, apply your own body heat if possible. If you have heat packs, place them in the neck, under the arms against the chest, and in the groin area. Do not rub the arms and legs which may bring cold blood to the organs and cause organ failure. Once the person can drink, feed small amounts of warm liquid.
Nobody knows how many people lose their lives annually to hypothermia, as it’s often unclear whether the person drowned instantly from cold shock, from cardiac overload or from hypothermia resulting in drowning. Physicians and coroners may describe causes of death in different ways.
What is clear is that some water enthusiasts think that caution and preparation isn’t cool. But being cool may lead to fatal coldness.