: This pretty much sums it up for me. Other activities I've recently
: learned, scuba and shooting, you see much more cautious
: beginners with more focus on education and safety, because guns
: and trying to breathe underwater have dangers that a novice
: easily recognizes. Sea kayaking, viewed by non-kayakers, is not
: obviously dangerous, which is partly why it kills so many
: people. Nobody throws on a scuba tank and goes swimming with no
: idea how.
Actually people do put on a tank and go "diving" all the time without knowing how. It's certainly much less common than kayaking ignorantly, but it happens more often than people believe.

When I started actively trying to kayak about 10 years ago, now, I was at Acadia. I had been in boats before and my buddy was formerly Navy so we convinced the rental shop we would be fine with true touring boats and no guide for an island hopping excursion we wanted to do. We got a tandem (his wife was with us) and a single and headed out. His wife and I convinced him we shouldn't do a 2 mile open water to one of the larger islands but we did do more than we should have been allowed. Luckily, we're all trained in rescue and emergency but we weren't prepared for the water temps. If anything had happened it would have gone badly very quickly.

Even then we all knew we were pushing our limits but we were young(ish) and foolish.

Recently I did a little tour with some newbies and several of them wanted to go without PFDs. One of my cardinal rules is you wear a pfd at all times on the water in a kayak and it maybe made me look like a hard-ass but I'm okay with that.