Shops selling inflatable boats should do more to help keep people safe around water, says Wick RNLI safety volunteer William Munro
The increased availability of inflatable watersports equipment is adding to the challenges of keeping people safe at sea, according to a Wick safety expert. William Munro, a master mariner in the merchant navy with 44 years' experience of being at sea, says that retailers need to be doing more to help get the safety message across.
Inflatable kayaks, paddleboards and other equipment have been readily available this summer, not just in specialist marine and outdoor shops but in supermarkets across the country. And with warmer temperatures, more and more people have been taking to the water – though not all of them are aware of the potential pitfalls.
Mr Munro, who is the water safety volunteer at the Wick branch of the RNLI, said: "The problem is these things are becoming cheaper, mass market. Everyone's selling them and the problem is there's no safety messaging with it – a couple of wee labels on the packaging or a wee label stuck to the paddleboard or your inflatable canoe, but people just don't relate to them, they don't understand sea state, wind direction and tides.
"A typical problem that we're seeing is that you'll launch from a lovely sunny beach which is behind a sand dune, say, so beyond the sand dune it's flowing quite well and it's sheltered in front of the sand dune. As soon as they go on the paddleboard 100 yards out, the wind then picks them up and blows them away.
"They just don't understand how the sea operates and they don't understand how the winds can just catch you like that and how fast these things go in the wind. They then don't have the experience or the strength to get back to overcome that."
Mr Munro, who also operates Caithness Seacoast with his wife Adelaine from Wick harbour, believes that retailers must take more responsibility for helping to spread the safety message about watersports equipment they sell.
"There's no education coming from the retailers about the type of water, the type of conditions when you should be wearing different types of life vest – they come in all sorts of different forms," he said.
"For example, during our Harbour Day we had an RNLI tent inviting people to look at buoyancy aids and life jackets and telling the general public, if you're going kayaking this is what you need, if you're on a fishing trip this is what you need, if you're going canoeing this is what you should wear – but that information is not going out enough.
"The retailers have a bigger part to play. To be fair, the boat chandlers across the road – he's one of my safety ambassadors and he's also a launch authority for the lifeboat – sells inflatable equipment but he also tells them what they should be buying and what the safety implications are, and he has a big load of RNLI leaflets to hand out."
Research commissioned by clothing firm Helly Hansen shows that 62 per cent of people paddleboarding, kayaking and canoeing did not include a personal floatation device or life jacket as an essential piece of kit.
New figures from the RNLI this summer show that the charity saved the lives of 42 people across the UK last year who got into trouble while paddleboarding, kayaking and canoeing, and 59 paddleboarders have been saved over the last decade.
Lifeboat launches to paddleboard incidents went up 64 per cent in 2021 (144) from the previous year (88) while RNLI lifeguards responded to 132 per cent more paddleboard incidents in 2021 (504) than the previous year (217).
A paddleboarder was rescued earlier this month after drifting out to sea from Sinclair's Bay. Wick RNLI lifeboat the Roy Barker II and Wick and Duncansby HM Coastguard search teams went to the scene and fishing vessel Reaper was praised for assisting in the rescue.
Mr Munro said: "We're starting to see the top of the iceberg, like that call-out with the inflatable paddleboard. We've only had one of these incidents in Wick. I did the debrief for the lady who was picked up and I said, where did you buy it? She said the internet. Did you get any safety literature with it? I don't think so. Did you read any literature? No.
"It was just no, no, no and she was quite an intelligent lady.
"The RNLI can only do so much, they're only a charity, and as a water safety volunteers, we're just in the background and we're trying to do a prevention thing. We're trying to get the message across, just softly, softly.
"It's a busy coastline, there's a lot going on here – you've got cliff walkers on the John O'Groats Trail, you've got kayaking, paddleboarding, sea angling, rock angling, diving, fishing, commercial fishermen, you've got the wind farm, you've got cable laying going on, wild swimming, tombstoning.
"So what I've got is a good platform with the RIB business – we're seeing a few thousand passengers through us every year – so we spend a few minutes each tour just giving brief safety advice about cliff walking and water temperature and just passing that to the general public."
But there is always more to be done to get across the safety message to locals and visitors to the area, according to Mr Munro.
"The retailers do have a part to play in that, particularly when they're a sea town retailer like your Tesco in Wick," he said. "This year with the heatwaves you can see the attraction of going to cool water is always there and [across the country] we've already had a lot of young lads drown in the quarries and the rivers and the harbour fronts.
"One of the biggest concerns we have locally is going to the castles on the peninsulas of rock, and then there's the likes of Whaligoe Steps, and the volume of footfall to these places is just incredible.
"Some of the inappropriate behaviour off the pathway near the edge of the cliff is a disaster waiting to happen.
"We want people to come, we want them to enjoy it, but just be aware of that wee bit extra risk."
More information about staying safe near, in and on the water can be found at https://rnli.org/safety
