Knowing how to kayak safely as a non swimmer is one of the best knowledge you can have as a person who loves kayaking but cannot swim.
As far as kayaking is concerned, knowing how to swim is another great skill to gain mastery of.
This is because it increases your safety when you are kayaking.
In some of the times when you kayak, you may face a situation in which your kayak flips over on turbulent water.
Sometimes your kayak may be far apart from you after flipping over..
In order to get into your kayak again, you have to swim to it.
But if you cannot swim, you may be stranded in the water if you did not kayak with a more experienced person that knows how to swim.
This puts you at a risk of getting drowned in the water in worse cases.
That is why you have to know how to kayak safely if you do not know how to swim.
How To Kayak Safely As a Non Swimmer
1) Always Use a Life Jacket When Kayaking
As a person with limited or zero knowledge about swimming, you have to make sure that you are well protected from drowning.
This is to be done when you are on the water and when you are even close to the water body.
The best way to protect yourself from drowning due to your lack of swimming ability is to make sure that you wear a life jacket anytime you are on the water.
This will help protect you and limit the level of damage you sustain in case a casualty occurs.
But in using a life jacket, you have to make sure that it is a good one.
This is to make sure that the life jacket will function optimally when the need arises.
2) Do Not Kayak Too Deep Into The Water
One of the ways a non swimmer can be safe when kayaking is to make sure that they kayak close to the shores of the water.
That is why kayaking deep into the water body is very bad if you do not have a good experience with swimming.
That is why you have to make sure that when you kayak, it must be close to the shores of the water.
If you want to kayak deep into the water, it must be done with the help of an experienced person who can swim well.
Apart from that, make sure that you limit your kayaking activities to the shores of the water.
This will help increase your visibility to other people that are also in the water having a good time.
In case of any casualty, the people around can save you immediately.
3) Avoid Using a Faulty Kayak
If you have ever passed through a safety training, one of the things that is always emphasized upon has to do with the optimal functionality of the vessel you use on the water surface.
This is because no matter the level of safety gears you put on, a bad or faulty kayak will ruin your safety on the water.
That is why it is a must to always perform routine checks on your kayaks before use.
This is very important when you have an inflatable kayak.
With an inflatable kayak, the level of damage is always worse than that of a plastic kayak when it has faults like developing holes.
This is why bad practices like dragging a kayak on a rough surface is very bad and should be avoided at all cost.
This prevents the development of holes in the kayak which ruins the reliability of the kayak.
It is also very important to inspect the air inlet valve in the kayak always to make sure that it is not leaking air from the inflatable kayak.
This reduces the air pressure in the kayak.
If the person in the kayak does not return to the shores of the water on time, the inflatable kayak may sink due to deflation.
This may result to drowning.
To kayak safely as a non swimmer, you have to make sure that you are not using a kayak that is bad.
This will help reduce the probability of facing a casualty when you kayak on the water.
4) Wear The Right Gears When Kayaking
Another way on how to kayak safely as a non swimmer is to make sure you use the right kayaking gears always.
When you want to kayak, it is in your best interest to make sure that you use the right kayaking gears.
When this is done, you place yourself in a high rank of safety when you kayak as a person that cannot swim.
Some of the right gears you can use when you kayak includes personal floatation devices like a life jacket.
This helps keep you afloat when your kayak runs into casualties while you kayak.
Due to this, you will not sink in the water till a rescue team removes you from the water and takes you to a safe place.
5) Do Not Kayak In Zones That Are Dangerous
Before you kayak in any place, make sure that you have some background knowledge about the place.
It is not always advisable to just put your kayak on the water of any place and begin to kayak when you do not have adequate security information about the place.
Doing this puts you at a risk of an attack if the place is dangerous.
That is why you have to be security conscious of where you kayak.
On a lot of water bodies, there are lots of reported cases of attack from pirates every year.
This makes such water bodies very unsafe for someone to kayak especially someone that does not know how to swim.
Kayaking on such water bodies will only expose you to harm that you would have avoided if you had inquired about the security level of the place.
When you discover that a place is not safe, do yourself good and avoid kayaking there.
6) Kayak In Places In Which Others Can See You
Another way on how to kayak safely as a non swimmer is to be visible to other people in the water.
When you are not really firm in experience of kayaking or swimming, make sure that you are not far from the visibility of others around the water body when you are on the water.
You have to put yourself in the spotlight always.
This is because as an inexperienced person, you may run into some casualties sometimes.
When people are around you, it makes it easy for you to find rescue from the people around.
But when you are far from the visibility of others, you risk encountering casualties that causes fatal damages to you.
In worse case scenarios, this could lead to drowning when you are not rescued out of the water on time.
That is why kayaking in the open where people can see you is one of the safe ways a non swimmer can kayak without casualties.
7) Take Swimming Lessons
That you cannot swim does not mean that that is an eternal verdict on you.
If you love the kayaking sport, you have to make sure that you know how to swim.
This is always a great added advantage to any person that kayaks.
But if you do not know how to swim, you have to make sure that you learn it.
It is not as difficult as some people think it is.
What you have to do is to make yourself available and to learn.
In doing so, you need to enroll with a tutor that will show you the basics of how to swim.
Gradually as time goes on, you will find it easy to swim very well.
This will make your kayaking moments very enjoyable when you kayak.
This is because you can also decide to switch to swimming before or after you might have finished kayaking.
8) Take Kayaking Lessons
One of the things that is seen in people that enroll in kayaking course is the ability to swim well.
This is because when kayaking is taught, one of the lessons that will be learnt is how to swim.
So if you are someone that does not know how to swim, that means that you may have limited knowledge on how to kayak well.
If you are one of such persons, what you have to do is to make sure that you enroll in a kayak training course.
In such learning exposure, you will be taught how to swim well and how to handle your kayak in cases of casualties.
This includes how to get into your kayak after your kayak has flipped over and many more great lessons.
This will help boost your experience and confidence when it comes to kayaking and swimming.
9) Leave The Water When Water Waves Become Turbulent
Anytime you discover that the water current that you are kayaking on as a person with limited swimming skills is getting turbulent, you have to make sure that you get out of the water.
When the water begins to get very turbulent, it becomes less safe to kayak.
This is even worse for someone that cannot swim.
Any mistake at such time could lead to a very fatal damage to the people in the water.
This could be worse cases like some drowning in the water when the water current or waves get really turbulent.
What you have to do to keep yourself safe when you experience a turbulent water current is to make sure that you get out of the water speedily.
This a one of the ways on how to kayak safely as a non swimmer as it will help avoid casualties from happening to you due to your lack of ability to swim.
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