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Whats with that orange kayak?

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Saturday, 29 December 2007

All about safety

The future's so bright I have to wear shades :-)

I did think about this before even embarking on a coastal kayak fishing trip and really it's a no-brainer. If one spends most of their time fishing in coastal waters, the issue of colour goes beyond cosmetics. I'm fond of the Caribbean blue colour, and chose that initially because there is a theory that a kayak with a blue base can be somewhat camouflaged by the blue sky behind it (to fish underneath). Not only did I figure that it might help on the stealth factor, it may also help to prevent sharks from even noticing me.

But guess what... by far the most dangerous encounters I had on the water were the speed and proximity of other boats - particularly the ones that hadn't noticed me. In a few of these instances I was probably as much to blame - if not more so - than the other boater. During a sunny day and with a choppy swell, a blue kayak can also blend in to the background on top of the water, making it somewhat difficult to notice in certain conditions. This is especially true if the swell is rising any more than a couple of feet, which it often does. It happened to me just last week while kayak fishing off Vincentia in Jervis Bay, almost getting rammed by a yacht that simply didn't notice me until I passed their port side by just a few meters. I think they got more of a fright than I did.

The orange coloured Hobie kayaks is rather bright and can be spotted easily from quite a distance. And so far it hasn't seemed to have impacted my catch rate either. Although it's probably not as photogenic as the Caribbean blue, nor as 'earthy' as the popular moss colour, I think that next to the yellow papaya colour, it's the easiest Hobie kayak colour to detect in rough open water. If I continued to use the blue colour I'd be fitting a safety flag for sure. Indeed, I fitted a Firestick flag to the orange adventure just for good measure, although I'm unsure if this colour needs it or not.