How to use a Kayak River Rescue Throw Bag

Video Transcript

"When using throw bags, you really want to use them in the right situations and often people get a little over eager and use them in appropriately. Whenever you are about to deploy the throw bag, you want to make sure that the person you are throwing it to, knows it's coming. So letting them know by shouting rope nice and clearly and loudly so they can hear and you make eye contact with them is important. You always want to make sure you are throwing the bag from an appropriate base as well. So throwing from a kayak or a canoe where you don't have a lot of stability and you are not securely fastened to the ground is not the best idea. On larger rivers, occasionally it is okay to throw from a rock. However if you do that, that person in the water touches the end of the rope causes a lot of drag so you are going to get pulled towards them. So you are going to get taken too and also the person you are throwing to. You don't want to throw to someone who is panicking and thrashing around and you definitely don't want to throw to someone who is unconscious. Just placing a rope in the river is creating a bad situation and once it is in that moving current, it is pretty uncontrollable sometimes and it can create a worse hazard than already existed. "