Wear Those PDFs People!!!

Well, it finally happened to me last week. After years of in-season canoe/kayak/boat usage during paddles and fishing outings, w/o an incident (since my high school days), I tipped my canoe over. In a deep lake. I had four consecutive days out on this lake fishing while wearing my PDF. Then, wouldn't you know it, on that fifth day, I decided instead to sit on my seat cushion-style PDF atop the stern seat while solo in my fiberglass canoe. Trolling a fly line and battling the moderate mid-day wind across the lake, a sudden gust caused me to react to counter the drift imparted on the bow, and the combination of the higher center of gravity (sitting on my PFD), sudden bow swing, my counter lean into the paddle, and I suppose the small 'wave' height caused the canoe to roll. Wow - was that unexpected! That's why they call these types of events 'accidents' when you read about them in the news afterwards. The next 20-30 seconds were a somewhat panicked blur where I had to simultaneously and quickly process and assess the 1.) two fishing rods + tackle bag drifting away from the swamped canoe, 2.) the fly line wrapped around my one leg resulting from my initial flailing, 3.) reaching for both the canoe stern handle and the drifting PDF cushion, 4.) reaching for my waistband folding knife to slice the tangled fly line, and 5.) hoping to save the canoe! The next 45-60 seconds had the wind drift me and the whole jalopy mess to a point where my leg somehow found footing on an underwater boulder in about 5.5' of depth ( I had been trolling in about a 9-11' depth of the 70' deep lake). I was able to wade the remaining 45 yards towing the canoe to shore at that point and get things straightened out from there. Lucky. My overall point here is, the 5 or so action items below would automatically be reduced by simply having a PDF worn when falling into the water...would have been one less thing to process and worry about as I scrambled to figure a way out of the mess. Murphy's Law struck, as I had been otherwise wearing it all the previous days. WEAR THOSE PDFs at ALL TIMES!!!!!!!!! :thumbs: ( I lost nothing, except my pride, and did not have to cut my fly line - whew). PLAY SAFELY.