PPB kayak fishing tragedy

Author: josh

Category: News

Created on Thursday, 01 December 2011 07:45

Written by Josh

Flags are flying at half mast around the Aussie kayak fishing scene right now with news that two kayak fishermen lost their lives while kayaking in Port Phillip Bay on Tuesday. Our thoughts are with their friends and family at this time. This is very sad news.

Paul Washington and Kevin Caithness launched their kayaks from the Sandringham yacht club into calm conditions but the weather took a drastic turn for the worst soon after, so it's likely that somehow they were both seperated from their kayaks. Despite wearing PFDs, both men drowned and their bodies were found washed up a considerable distance from where they started.

*Personal note: The Sandringham yacht club is where I started my kayak fishing career and is probably one of the safest launching spots you can imagine. When conditions are good, Port Phillip Bay is also a relatively safe body of water as well, however it does tend to get rather choppy when conditions go bad. As someone who has seen it happen in that area numerous times, this news doesn't shock me anywhere near as much as it saddens me. I've been caught out there like that myself (and is in fact how I managed to give myself a chronic shoulder injury almost a decade ago). Apparently both men had only recently just purchased their kayaks and although I really don't want to speculate too much on exactly what happened here, I'm assuming at this stage that both were relative beginners. According to one observer, conditions weren't far off being pretty much as rough as it gets out there, so even experienced kayaks would have been challenged by it.

RIP Paul Washington and Kevin Caithness