Jonathan Riddell's Diary

I grumped out of the Forth Canoe Club AGM tonight which probably left a bad atmosphere so here’s some explanation why for anyone who’s interested or just for my own therapy.

I’ve been on the committee for the last 8 years as website editor.  That’s a pretty simple role if you’re into making websites but I spent most time filling in whatever gaps needed filling in at the club.  Some of that is time consuming hard work like organising club nights, baths sessions, bookings for coaches, running the Div 1 slalom and some of it is simple but needs doing like buying a new diary each year or taking out the dustbin.  I negotiated access to the 1/4 of the boathouse we didn’t have access to and managed to prevent our landlords moving us to Wester Hails.  And some of it is just making sure people follow the rules like paying for using boats or signing the diary.  It’s exhausting but very satisfying.  When someone breaks into the boathouse or throws the toilet into the canal I go and sort it out.  Others help plenty too but I like to think I do my part.

Over the years I had to put up with quite a lot of hassle from people.  We had a coaching coordinator who didn’t coordinate coaches and kept trying to stop people getting qualifications, that was tricky to work through.  Then the treasurer said I was full of bullshit for asking him to make a budget.  I was called immoral for waiting to buy new boats to replace old ones.  I was told I’d have the police called on me because someone had abandoned boats years ago and I’d no idea where they were.  And a long rant about a grievance with me because I pointed out someone should pay for borrowing a boat for a month.    I even had to take over being coaching coordinator while living abroad after the previous one had given me hassle. It’s draining stuff and at no point did the committee minute any criticism of the people who were hassling me or thanks for me.  In normal committees or workplaces the person taking hassle would get supported and thanked but here I was just expected to accept it because we’re British and we don’t like confrontation.

I returned last summer from a year living abroad to find the club was running smoothly (with me filling in various bits) and all was well.  Except the hut custodian had stopped hut custodianing as happens with volunteers.  One day I came in and there had been some mystery boats put in the boathouse.  Looking around there were several others that weren’t accounted for.  We have limited spaces in the boathouse so this means spaces used by club boats get taken away, spaces which could be used for private boats get taken by others without asking, boats go in unsafe locations and boats end up outside the boathouse which attracts crime.  I then spent 6 months repeatedly notifying the committee and the people who had dumped the boats they needed shifted and nothing happened.  Eventually we did get a proposal from Mick the commodore to deal with it by continuing to do nothing.  I didn’t see that as an option, it’s unfair on the rest of the club and I had people asking me if they could store boats and I had to say they couldn’t because others have just taken spaces without asking.  One of the boat owners asked for my lawyers details claiming I’d damaged his boat and threatened to sue me which was a lie.  Eventually I said I wasn’t doing committee duties for the moment and eventually the committee agreed to send a letter to this one boat owner to tell him to remove the boat.  He didn’t do this for over a month during which he started writing cheeky notices in the diary.

In normal situations when you have rules and they get ignored the person gets some penalty, if they threaten you with legal action they get told to go away but none of this happened because we’re nice and don’t like a fuss and I should just put up with it.  So I proposed a motion for the AGM to document it and require an explanation and apology from the people who had ignored our rules, cheated us out of unpaid fees or threatened us with legal action.  But the committee made up some further rules to say they wouldn’t take the motions at the AGM.  So I flounced out.  Or minced, I like to think.

It’s an amateur sports club so it’s not terribly important, but after putting in so much energy I’m burnt out from getting no support from the committee back.  Making up rules to aid people who cheat the rules rather than support volunteers is just bad management.  The club will continue to flourish, I even managed to find people to fill all the empty roles on the committee this year except my own and I like everyone on the committee now.  I’ll find something else to spend my energy on, should be fun.

 

Here’s some lesson plans, or at least coaching points, for the bits needed for a BCU FSRT course.

Intro:

• Assessing risks
• How to get help
• What kit to have to hand
• Ask/give option to warn about medical issues
• Group management, communication and boundaries
• clean rope principle, one handed knife
• safety features of boats
• safety features of clothes and kit
• manual handling issues

Protocols

• Shout, Reach, Throw, Row
• Self, Team, Victim/Swimmer, Equipment
• Communication, Line of Sight, Avoidance/Awareness, Position of max usefulness

Coach a Swimmer to Shore

• eye contact, use name, clear instructions, be firm
• consider hand signal to group to tell them to keep still
• good foot grip or kneel down
• use this for all the other rescues

Paddle rescue

• leg stance
• firm grip

Throwline

• accurate throw to person over 10m or more
• swimmer on their back
• thumbs up for hand grip
• can be under arm, over arm or lob around. under arm usually best, hand on scruff of bag with two fingers on the bag
• finish throw with hand pointing where you want it to go

Throwline Rethrow

• Get it right first time, rethrows will always be rubbish
• large coils in hand and throw all
• large coils onto ground, get water in bag for weight, throw bag
• large coils on ground, small coils in hand, wrap bag round small coils, throw bag

The above can all be done on the land

Contact tows

• front or back

Sling towlines

• watch out for putting over head or in teeth(!)

Towlines

• quick to deploy, quick to release, quick to re-set
• know where the release is and what angle to pull it at

Boat Empties

• like for like craft
• boat empties can be done separate from swimmer stuff to keep people out of cold water for longer
• for GP kayak orientate front to front using footrest bolts
• palm roll upright
• roll on side, one hand at front of cockpit holding it up, one hand on top at back of cockpit pushing down to gently empty
• when all water out use knee to ratchet over your boat and sea-saw to empty
• if the boat still has water in it get swimmer to help pull over and down
• if can’t get swimmer to help then just leave water in it, don’t strain your back
• you can use a sling to help you rotate and lift the boat
• for sea kayaks/touring boats with gunwales rotate bow of boat onto your boat by rolling it away from you and sliding knee under
• Canadians can do same as touring boats above
• or curl method with boats parallel, using gunwale to lift other boat then throw away from you to get it upright

Deep water rescue

• straight lift into kayak easiest
• heel hook into kayak if not so strong, quite faffy
• climb over your kayak, risky
• sling around cockpit as step up
• in canadians they sit in the boat then step into yours

Swimmer rescue

• ensure they are calm before you approach
• holding on to front or back
• keep head away from front of boat
• get them to kick legs if on back

Unconscious rescue

• go alongside swimmer, drop paddle if you need to
• lean onto near side of their boat, reach over and pull from other side
• hold onto their clothes
• first aid: shout to get them to open eyes, squeeze shoulders or hand, check breathing (if not breathing 5 CPR breaths but not much point in chest compressions)
• get assistant to raft up with them and push both boats to shore
• if you can’t get their boat upright them jump in the water and roll it
• if you can’t roll it then pop their deck and drag them out

Self rescue

• This means an eskimo rescue
• get them to practice rolling down and up on bow of another boat if new
• three bangs, hands outwards
• rescuer at 45 degree approach
• also try paddle presentation

Scenarios

• unconcious person in water rescue into canadian
• rescue and kayak from a canadian
• rescue a canadian from a kayak
• sea kayak paddle float

 

There’s no API to update Bugzilla product versions. This is weird because projects like Plasma release dozens of bits of software at the same time and we need to update the version numbers in Bugzilla so people can correctly report bugs against them. Even if it was only 1 bit of software we released it would still be nice to automate that rather than click through lots of web pages.

For Plasma I’ve written a wee shell script which uses Curl to load the relevant page to update the version. It takes a list of Bugzilla products (which in KDE land don’t have any direct relation to Git archives or tars we release so this has to be maintained manually) and a cookie which you need to extract out of your web browser.

plasma-add-bugzilla-versions

git clone git://anongit.kde.org/releaseme

I’ve just completed FSRT Provider Training (also called Orientation for some reason). It was a course run by British Canoeing (BCU) and taken by Sean McGrath at Teesside White Water Course.

February is not a great time to run this course, it involves prolonged exposure in the water. I had to buy a drysuit for the course which along with a fleece under layer and a skull cap and wet shoes still meant my hands froze off. But I’m quite pleased at how my fragile head didn’t give in.

There were 6 of us on the course, two of us club coaches and the rest professional canoe coaches. I was surprised to find you can be a WWS&R provider before you can be a FSRT provider.

Anyway here’s some notes for my own use and anyone else who’s interested.

Ratios are 1 staff to 6 students. Often run as 2 staff with 9 to 12 students.

The aim is to give students a solution to every problem on the syllabus. Some solutions may be more appropriate for different students depending on strength of rescuer, strength of swimmer, craft used etc so providers will need to know them all. Some solutions can be used for multiple jobs.

All BCU courses take longer to run the syllabus properly than the recommended time allows. Ideally run FSRT over 2 days or split over several but usually it’s run over 1.

Self rescue on the course notes can still use another paddler e.g. Eskimo rescue or asking for help with their craft.

We started by discussing some basic points to teach for clothing, Canadian boats, kayaks. For Canadian boats I came up with buoyancy in both ends (at least), grab handles at both ends on strong points, pinters of appropriate length at both ends and ready to deploy and know the fittings of your boat. We played a game of explaining it while the other person said Kabaddi repeatedly in one breath (an Indian game) to check it was concise enough.

We did tows. For a Canadian tow knees on the other boat’s painter (or quick release knot).

When doing shout to rescue make eye contact and use the other person’s name.

Throwlines always need lots of practice. Re-throws lots more (although they’re rarely used). One technique shown was to make large coils on ground then a handful of small coils in hand then wrap those coils in the throw bag, pick up the other end and throw the bag hard and overhand.

My paddle presentation Eskimo rescue failed because the paddle slipped off. It’s not normally used in general purpose kayaks however.

Getting a swimmer into a kayak or Canadian can be done with a straight lift by the swimmer into boat, heel hook also available but can be more faffy. It can be done with the swimmer going over your boat as a step up method.

Emptying a full kayak needs far hand at front of cockpit lifting up and near hand on side of boat pushing down. When empty swing onto your boat to sea-saw but if there’s still water in the back (if it has a convex back then the buoyancy bags will leave a gap) then don’t lift it on either get help or just leave some water in it. Use the near knee and lean under the boat and ratchet on to bring the boat over, don’t lift.

To rescue an open Canadian or sea kayak turn it upright in the water, go to the bow and put the craft at 45 degrees to your own then rotate boat away from you and use knee or gunwale to lift it and empty.

We played a game of running hugs, naming a person who then stayed still and you turn to be parallel and paddle alongside them and hug them to stop. Practice for positioning near their boat.

For unconscious paddler rescue tell the victim to play dead, let body go limp, hold nose and head raises to back of boat when upside down. Tell them to stay dead when uprighted so you can check airways. In real situation you’d need to jump out of boat if you didn’t get them upright. I told students to bang on boat if it wasn’t working. In real situation you’d make rafts to push them into shore.

My progression plan is to write lesson plans including teaching points/learning outcomes for each of the syllabus points.

Now I need to observe some courses being run then be observed.

I went to the British Canoeing Event Safety Workship last night run by Dave Rosseter and the SCA.  Here’s some notes for my own interest and memory.

Events runs by SCA affiliated clubs are covered for liability by the Perkins & Slade Insurance so if someone dies at an event the insurance covers you being sued.  Following some incidents the insurance company asked for this workshop to happen so clubs at least have an idea how to check the events they run are safe.

An event is defined as an activity run by the club involving non-club members and outwith the BCU terms of reference. (Or run by an SCA committee.)

When running an event we have a duty of care to look after those involved.

We discussed a chain of responsibility which typically has an event organiser in the middle and club committee and SCA above them and volunteers below them.

We discussed the need to get authorisation of events, at a club that might be by the committee or at an AGM.

We discussed risk assessments which for each risk should include likelihood and seriousness as well as mitigation and whether that mitigation is proportionate.

We look at the 5 stages of an event

• Decision to run – why do you want to run it?
• Application and Authority – internal (club committee, safety officer) and external (property owners etc)
• Pre-event considerations (roles needing filled, equipment needed, briefing volunteers, facilities needed, training needed)
• Day of event (people in the right place, what happens when something unexpected occurred)
• Post event (review afterwards and where that review needs to be sent)

There was a slide about checklists for events but not much details.  I found one on the HSE website: checklist for village and community halls.

The acronym CALM was covered which are principles involved in dynamic risk assessment (and are similar to leadership principles of CLAP):

• Commuinication
• Avoidance
• Line of Site
• Management

There was a slide on people’s roles and span of control but not much detail on this.

There’s a load of resources that are due to come out to us. Useful stuff is on the HSE website and the gov.uk website such as the guide to organising community events.

It was an interesting enough workshop but I’m not convinced I learnt much, we already do all this in our club and many of the topics weren’t gone into in much detail.

Interesting to see British Canoeing use a photo from the FCC website in their slides, I wonder who authorised that and what their span of control was.