NEAH BAY — Preparations for the 2006 Tribal Canoe Journey are off to a chilly but safe start.
About 50 skippers and pullers from the Makah, Jamestown S’Klallam, Tulalip, Squaxin Island and Muckleshoot tribes practiced bailing out their canoes in the Makah Marina near the entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca on Saturday.
The water was only 54 degrees, and it probably won’t be all that much warmer when the tribes make their journey to Seattle in July.
The Muckleshoot are hosting this year’s journey, which has the theme, “Past and Present Pulling Together for Our Future.”
Tribes from the Olympic Peninsula, British Columbia and Puget Sound area will paddle over several weeks to the shores of Lake Washington.
The canoes are expected to arrive July 31, but the warmer weather doesn’t mean the paddlers will be safe from hypothermic conditions.
Dan Durge of the Neah Bay Emergency Medical Service Department said it takes only 30 minutes, on average, for a person to develop hypothermia in the waters of the Strait or Puget Sound.
Stay calm
Durge led the paddlers in Neah Bay on Saturday through a hypothermia safety course before they headed to the water for their practice runs.
He told the paddlers the most important thing to remember if they find themselves in the water is to keep calm.
“Panicking right away, regardless of the situation, is bad,” he said, because it expends a lot of energy and creates a scene of chaos.
The crews who practiced recovering from an overturned canoe Saturday were successful in staying calm, and they made it back into their canoes within 10 to 15 minutes.
“You’re going to lose less body heat out of the water than in,” Durge said, reminding the paddlers that it’s important to get out of the water as soon as possible.
