Safety Boater Clinic 04/18/2026
| River: | Haw |
| Skill: | All |
| Trip Date: | 04/18/2026 |
The Safety Boater Clinic is intended to train paddlers to function effectively as Safety Boaters within a group, emphasizing positioning, communication, anticipation, and boat-based rescue techniques.
In spite of the lack of water in nearby rivers the Clinic was a go but due to the low water levels it was decided to conduct the morning session on Jordan Lake. We all met up at the Fearington Point Boat Launch at 9am on Saturday April 18th. The plan was to migrate to Haw River Upper Section after lunch for the river-based activities. Paul Scrutton (Lead Instructor) talked the group through the options for the river which were (a) “Park & Play” at Chicken Bridge or (b) 7-miles in questionable water level in 90 degree heat to 15/501 take-out. The consensus was for the “Park & Play” option. More on this later!
We all convened under the trees in the shade and Paul opened the Clinic by having everyone introduce themselves and give some background on any prior safety boating experience. Many of the participants had had some level of safety knowledge from prior courses so we had a well-informed group. We then moved into the list of topics for the morning. Paul kicked things off with explaining the role and expectations of a Safety Boater. We went through the features of specialized safety equipment such as Rescue PFDs, leashes and throw ropes. We talked about safety boater positioning within a group and proper signaling on the river. We also covered risk mitigation, swimming consequences, hazard awareness and the importance of dressing for the water temperature.
CLAP, a handy acronym (found on Facebook) was explained:
Communication: Establish whistle signals (1 blast = Attention, 3 blasts = Emergency) and review hand signals BEFORE you peel out.
Line of Sight: Can you see the person behind you? If not, slow down. This keeps the group intact.
Avoidance: Give the boat in front of you “eddy space.” Unless there’s plenty of space in the eddy never enter a feature until the person ahead is clear.
Position: Nominate the positions before getting on water: Who is Lead? Who’s in the middle (if needed). Who is Sweep? The “Sweep” boat ideally should be a strong paddler carrying a full rescue kit. In a rescue situation consider nominating someone to stay upstream to warn others coming through of a recue in progress.
Once we got kitted up and on the water, we practiced rescue techniques including T-Rescues, side by side “hand placement” rescues, “Hand of God” pull-up rescues, gear retrieval, towing and plowing boats to shore. The T-Rescues worked for everyone, as did the side-by-side; directing an upside down paddler’s hand to the rescuer’s cockpit combing. The Hand of God was a bit more challenging. Differences in paddler’s weight and boat volume and height affected this. In every case pushing down on the near side of overturned boat helped the rescuer to reach the far side of the overturned boat.
Just like that it was time for lunch so we got out of the lake and into the shade. It was getting hotter (forecast high for the day was 90 degrees!) so we needed to hydrate and replenish our energy reserves for the afternoon’s activities.
Once lunch was done off we went to the Chicken Bridge on the Upper Haw section. Upstream of the bridge there is a swimming hole which gave us a large pool area below a very modest Class 1 rapid. There was also a log jam strainer at the bridge a couple of hundred feet below this which added a safety concern to anticipate. After Judy led us through a series of warm-up exercises on shore, we had everyone take turns at being the rescuer and rescuee and practiced all the things we had discussed in the morning session. Many T-rescues and Hands of God were deployed plus many wet exits resulting in successful boat & gear retrieval. Everyone got at least one turn to use the throw rope to pendulum in the volunteer swimmers coming through the rapid.
We were certainly limited by the water level but we did make the most of what we had to work with. We wrapped things up around 4pm with a de-brief. By then it was very hot so we were ready to call it a day!
In conclusion, the group felt an “advanced safety boater clinic” on more taxing water would be beneficial. Many thanks to all who participated!
Instructors:
Lead Instructor – Paul Scrutton
Assistant Instructor – Roy Siggins
Participants:
Judy Milakovich
Alton Chewning
Charles Lockett
Greg Moon
Dan Gosner
Ryan Oosterhuis