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Watching the discussion unfold following the Crystal Accident Report, one thing that I kept thinking about and coming back to is the time of the accident. I know that it doesn't matter what time of day it was, that this accident and the strainer that caused it would have caused the same thing regardless of time, but it kind of made me do some thinking, and it made me think of this question....when it comes to putting on, when is too late to put on?
I know everyone will have a different answer because of their own experiences, and obviously no one is "right". But would love to hear what others think about this.
For me, in my personal experience, I don't like to launch on a boating mission any later than 5 pm. And even than that is only if I am doing a short (<5 miles) easy run, like a local town run. On a more technical mission, like class III or better, I don't like to launch later than about 2 or 3. Because, even on simple runs like my backyard Gunnison, a flip, a misplaced oar stroke, a slide under some trees, etc, can turn into a mini-epic really quick. I remember one time we had a full ducky wrap on a boulder in an otherwise flat and benign stretch of water. Normally no problem, but since it happened at 7:30 pm in August we had precious little time to try and remove it and then continue downriver. An otherwise tiny and minor job quickly became exacerbated by the impending darkness.
And that is why I don't care for evening boating: the lack of time to properly recover from a unexpected situation, leading to feeling rushed and ultimately having a higher chance of making a mistake.
But again, that's just like, my opinion, man..... What is yours?
I know everyone will have a different answer because of their own experiences, and obviously no one is "right". But would love to hear what others think about this.
For me, in my personal experience, I don't like to launch on a boating mission any later than 5 pm. And even than that is only if I am doing a short (<5 miles) easy run, like a local town run. On a more technical mission, like class III or better, I don't like to launch later than about 2 or 3. Because, even on simple runs like my backyard Gunnison, a flip, a misplaced oar stroke, a slide under some trees, etc, can turn into a mini-epic really quick. I remember one time we had a full ducky wrap on a boulder in an otherwise flat and benign stretch of water. Normally no problem, but since it happened at 7:30 pm in August we had precious little time to try and remove it and then continue downriver. An otherwise tiny and minor job quickly became exacerbated by the impending darkness.
And that is why I don't care for evening boating: the lack of time to properly recover from a unexpected situation, leading to feeling rushed and ultimately having a higher chance of making a mistake.
But again, that's just like, my opinion, man..... What is yours?