Everybody is a strong swimmer until they are:
- unconscious
- exhausted
- in cold water
- disorientated
- injured
- in strong current
- entangled
- trying to save another person
- intoxicated
- not a strong swimmer
Yeah, but other than that everybody is a strong swimmer.
Cold. The Sea is cold, It doesn't matter where on Earth this happened the sea is cold it could happen in the Caribbean and the sea would still be cold.
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The sea is especially very cold in the North Atlantic. Here's just how cold the Atlantic is.
A pilot was flying a small Cessna across the ocean. Along the trip he encountered stronger headwinds than expected, and ended up in a situation where he didn't have enough fuel to reach dry land. He was going to have to ditch the plane in the ocean.
Fortunately he had plenty of time to figure this out, and he managed to locate an offshore oil rig he could get to. He radioed ahead to let them know he was coming. He made a perfectly controlled landing and touched down in the ocean just 500 meters from the oil rig. He was wearing a full body cold water immersion suit, but failed to zip it up all the way.
He died of hypothermia in the short time where the oil rig crew was running a tender out to him.
That's a great story. Ocean survival courses teach the 1-10-1 rule. If you are immersed in cold water, it takes 1 minute for catch your breath and orient yourself. You then have 10 minutes of useful movement before your hands stiffen up, and one hour until you are fully incapacitated. And "cold" means water at 15C or less, which is typical of the north Atlantic.
That's still colder than you are. I'm a skinny bitch, if it's not close to boiling I'll turn blue sooner or later.
Well you see, there's regular cold, and then there's not regular cold. I don't think they're talking about regular cold.
And swimming some miles in a pool isn't really comparable to the way home those people would have. I am a strong swimmer. But I'm not crazy.
I mean......to be fair, thats probably the best thing he could have done/said. He realizes in that moment that he's in the path of danger. Step 1......get the fuck out of there. Worry about step 2 when you're safe.
So I’m not a boat person but I was under the impression that the law of the sea requires other boats to aide people in the water. Like I think it’s a requirement. I’m pretty sure it’s the reason why tankers and whatnot stop and help ships in distress. Could be just something I heard as a kid though.
If I'm in his shoes, I'm doing EXACTLY what he did. If questioned about it, I'd say "Theres no way I could have helped. My presence would not have helped them. It would have only capsized my boat too, and put my crew in danger."
Of coarse, I'd never BE in his shoes. Because if someone asked me "Hey, do you want to go on a tiny boat, and look at whales?" My response would be "Fuck no! That sounds like a terrible idea."
I once ran away from a person in trouble to save my own hide, and it haunts me to this day.
I have no context on how this situation happened, but I'm going to guess there where a few signs the capsized boat captain ignored. Hope the whale wasn't injured.
They can just 3D print a new boat. I see that model everywhere. Just need to change the scale a bit.
I saw that that happened off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but this is saying Great Britain? That's a Humpback, and I've seen them off the coast of NH
Didn’t they study this and the theory was they were juveniles just playing a game?
It’s like cow tipping but with boats.
That was specifically the orcas going after boat rudders. This is just a couple of dinguses that got too close to a whale.
Thats like accidentally stubbing your toe on your way to the kitchen to grab something to eat.
Poor non-fish.