How to Pull Someone into a boat when Whitewater Rafting

Video Transcript

"During your trip talk you’re going to cover how to self-rescue, and also how to pull other crewmembers back into the boat. Often it you’re doing a pretty challenging section of the river, its good to practice that in flat water before you get going so that your crew gets a better idea of how it works and how easy it is to do. So it usually only takes one person to self-rescue, to rescue one swimmer, you look in their face, you grab them by the PFD right by their shoulders and then you use your legs, you fall over backwards and they come in on top of you. It’s a pretty effective, pretty quick way for you to rescue one another. Then you take your seat, make sure everyone is situated and then head on downstream. Often, if you don’t practice while you’re out there on the river what will happen then is the crew will all wait for somebody else to self-rescue, to rescue that person or probably worse, during the rapid is two or three people will jump to one side of the raft to save one person and that sets you too often in a situation to flip or a situation where you have more than one person swimming because you set a low side of the raft and then two or three people are swimming at one time. It’s usually better to have the guide stay in the back of the boat and continue guiding and the rest of the crew listening to those guiding commands and instructions so that you guys don’t end up getting in the situation where you all end up swimming. "