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Friends to Practice With
A Rocky River to Paddle
Understanding how pins happen
Safely managing your crew in a pin scenario
Efficiently extracting the raft from a pin scenario
In this lesson, Trevor and Kailee are addressing minor pins that you may experience on the river. These minor pins generally include issues like getting a tube of your boat stuck on a rock. This lesson is not designed to address full on wrap scenarios which we will cover later on in another video. This technique doesn’t solve every pinning issue that you may encounter on the water, however it will give you a good framework that we can build upon in more advanced lessons. So, what is the first thing you need to do when you get pinned?
You need to stop and assess your situation. The aim is to increase your sphere of awareness and stop your fight or flight response. You want to look at the boat and the surrounding currents as well as looking for your downstream safety. You also want to pick your swim in case you end up out of the boat at some point. By taking a second to slow down and really understand where you are it will bring down your state of mind from some scary urgent maneuver that needs to be made to a more reasonable pace where you can rationally figure out your next move.
The next piece is to find the obstacle that your boat is pinned on. You may be on a rock and it might be super obvious where it is, however you may also have multiple rocks pinning you in place. There are a lot of obstacles in the river though and you may be stuck on something worse as well. Underwater concrete, bridge piers, metal, trees, or even a vehicle could all be present in the river. Getting stuck in one of these more dangerous features may require more careful moves to accomplish the task, so you need to identify not only where you are pinned, but what you are pinned on.
Stability is important especially if you end up stuck on a log, trees or something more sinister. Mae sure your crew can make at least 3 points of contact to stabilize themselves from falling out. The last thing you want is a pinned boat and a swimmer in the water, because you will then compound the issue by not being able to effectively rescue the swimmer while your boat is pinned. Another reason you need to make sure your crew is stable is because you may have newer boaters on your raft. They may not know what happens next after you are pinned so you want to make sure that they aren’t swimming something that will ruin their day.
Slowing down the process and making methodical movements is the next critical step in getting out of the pin scenario. You want to move off of the point of the boat where the obstacle is located. Moving people off of the obstacle will take the weight off of the part of the boat pinning the raft to the obstacle and hopefully allow you to float free.
Everyone moving at once can quickly unbalance the boat and when the boat starts to move it is very possible people will fall off balance. This has a bit of a compounding effect, because when you get off the obstacle pinning you, some of your crew may end up in the water, but they definitely will not be able effectively paddle for a short time while they are recovering.
The solution to these problems is to slowly move one by one maintain multiple points of contact. As you slowly remove weight you can break free in a more controlled manner. Additionally, you will find that your crew is more easily able to maintain control of the raft. When you begin to slide off you may have one person off balance, but the rest of the crew can still effectively operate the boat.
If moving crew around begins to be successful then you can keep moving people around to get the raft free of the obstacle. If you see that the raft is beginning to get more stuck or nothing is happening, then you can easily reassess the situation without things being chaotic. If you find that moving your crew is making the boat begin to wrap you can easily move people back to counteract that issue. Moving then reassessing more than anything else gives you time to understand what the next move is then safely execute it.
The final step is to make sure you are controlling the boat. Sometimes moving one person will allow the raft to begin to slide off the rocks. At that point you can take control and possibly paddle off of the obstacle. When you finally want your crew to return to their paddle positions have them move back in the same way. One by one maintaining stability and multiple points of contact on the raft.
We have seen in the past and are often pretty critical of the bouncing technique. This is a bit of an old school technique that doesn’t really apply to modern rafts or rafting. Back in the ancient days of rafting when hairspray, straight skis, and VHS were all the rage rafts without those fancy inflatable floors dominated the rivers. Back in those days when you got pinned you could just jump up and down to get the boat to move off a rock. We don’t ski in jeans anymore and we don’t bounce any more. The reason is the boat dynamics function entirely differently with modern rafts. And there are a few reasons why
It wastes a lot of energy – Bouncing uses a lot of energy not only trying to stay in the boat, but also physically flinging all of your weight in the air from a sitting position. This is especially bad if you have an inexperienced crew as they will likely not be accustomed to the muscle movements rafting requires and you’ll just wear them out.
It unbalances your crew – Bouncing forces part of your body to lose contact with the raft. In that brief moment if you lose contact and the raft moves then your crew will end up off balance and potentially swimming. If they just wasted a bunch of energy bouncing then they are going to have a generally unpleasant swim. You want your crew to be stable and moving methodically.
Hides multiple pin points – If your boat is pinned in 2 places then choosing to bounce as your first reaction can make you lose sight of where the raft is pinned. You may not see the raft being pinned both bow and stern. If you start bouncing, you’re not going anywhere and you end up simply jumping for no reason. This does not help conserve energy for when you really need it…which is going to be after you float free and now need to navigate through a rapid.
It can get you more stuck – Rafts float, right? You also Just floated into a rock, right? Well, if you watched the video on river features you will know that water often hits a rock and deflects around it, but some of that water goes up because the obstacle prevents it from passing directly downstream. This will force your raft up and on top of the obstacle. If you suddenly take all the weight off the raft, it will float higher and thus try to continue downstream. The only problem is that the obstacle itself is directly downstream so it will end up floating farther on top of the obstacle. When you put the weight back on the raft by falling you will then pin the boat again. Unfortunately, you are then just working the boat more and more on top of the pin…the opposite way of what you want.
The final thought is that you also need to be sensitive to the weight and balance of the raft as you move your crew about the boat. The biggest issue is overloading one side of the boat and forcing the raft to either flip or wrap. Understanding how this works does not have a one size fits all solution. It depends upon the obstacle, current, weight of the boat, size of the crew, where extra equipment is rigged, tube inflation, and a variety of other factors. The best advice that we can offer is train with your equipment and try to understand how moving the weight around the boat affects the stability of the boat. This is why training is so important, especially if you can find qualified in person training to help you master these skills.
