Experienced Jersey sea kayaker Keith Pyman, a member of the Jersey Canoe Club, issued the warning after seeing two adults and a child paddling sit-on-top kayaks up to 300 metres off the east coast last weekend.
‘The sun was out and the water was calm, which I am sure gave them a false sense of security,’ he said. ‘My concern was that they appeared to only have light clothing, T-shirts etc and no sign of buoyancy aids. In the event of a capsize, they would or could have been in serious difficulty with cold-water shock with the current water temperature.’
He added the three people he saw returned to land safely, but that there was a real danger people could be deceived by the recent fine weather into thinking that summer had arrived.
‘They may not have due regard to the water temperature,’ he explained ‘which at only some ten or so degrees currently could result in rapid onset of shock and hypothermia if people are not suitably dressed and protected, even though they were in sight of shore. By the time emergency services had responded and reached the location, the situation could easily have been different.’
Mr Pyman’s concerns have been echoed by the RNLI, which said: ‘Cold-water shock is a leading cause of death that many people fail to appreciate.’
A spokesman for the organisation said: ‘Many deaths recorded by coroners are mistakenly attributed to either hypothermia or drowning, when in fact the cause of death, or cause leading up to the death, is something different.
‘One of the authors of the seminal work Essentials of Sea Survival, Professor Mike Tipton, is quoted as saying, “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”. It is cold-water shock that tends to kill people around our shores.’
