I just watched a rescue of some people who fell through the ice in New Jersey.
It happens every year, and there are videos of rescuers crawling along the ice, so they don’t fall through, or using ladders to spread their weight, or dressing up in survival suits.
All of these must have taken some time for the rescuers to call for help, and the emergency teams to get there, and get ready, so that filming could start.
It is all so unnecessary, if they had used a canoe in the first place. Using a canoe to rescue someone who has fallen through ice is simplicity itself, and the rescue can happen within minutes with no danger to the rescuers. And lakes and rivers usually have canoes available around them.
You can slide a canoe along the top of the ice just fine. It is almost just an overgrown ice skate.
The bowman leaves one foot inside the canoe, and holds the gunnels, while scooting along the ice with her other foot.
The sternman also leaves one foot inside the canoe, and holds the gunnels, while scooting along the ice with her other foot. For balance, the bow and stern use opposite feet, one uses their left foot outside, and the other, their right foot outside.
The canoe spreads their weight across the ice, so they are in no danger of breaking almost any thinness of ice as they make their way to rescue the victim.
If they do break through the ice, all they have to do is pull their outside foot back into the boat and sit down and grab their paddle. They don’t get wet, they don’t fall in, and they continue on their way to the rescue.
If they then encounter thicker ice, it is easy to ram onto up and over the thicker ice and let the canoe slide back up on top of the ice and continue on their way, stand back up and continue sliding toward the rescue with no interruption.
Once they reach the victims, they are faced with the hardest part of the rescue: how to get the victim into the canoe without capsizing and ending everybody back in the water?
That too is easily accomplished if you have a spare paddle and some rope long enough to go around and under the canoe. I have seen it used with just the rope and looped around a thwart.
If you try to bring in the victim on one side of the canoe, everybody will lean toward helping the victim, and the boat will flip. We don’t want that.
So, the trick is to equalize the forces pulling that side of the canoe down and pull the other side of the boat down at the same time.
So, you loop a rope around the far side of the boat, and then loop it around the rescue side of the boat and use that rope to help bring the victims out of the water into the boat.
You want a footstep stirrup loop to end up hanging two or three feet below the boat on the side closest to the victim so they can step into it and use it to help pull themselves into the boat.
From Paddling.com/learn/stirrup-strap-re-entry. (Ignore the "water knot" and tube strap stuff)
So, make a bowline loop on one end of the rope, about a foot across. Lay a paddle crosswise across the canoe near the midpoint of the canoe and let the rope stirrup hang down off of the paddle into the water about two feet deep.
The trick is to loop the rope around the far side of the shaft of a paddle that is laid crosswise across the canoe, then drag the rope under the canoe, and loop it over the other end of the paddle shaft and let it hang down into the water, with a loop in it two or three feet down in the water.
You want the rope to slip freely over the rescue side of the paddle to be able to transfer the downward force of the person to the far side of the canoe and pull that side of the boat down to balance the forces involved in pulling the victim out of the water.
Also, a reminder to stay as low to the bottom of the canoe as possible during the rescue. One of the rescuers can help the victim, and the other rescuer can work to keep the boat stable.
With the stirrup helping the victim into the boat and the boat staying stable until they get into the boat, it is now possible to slide the boat back up into the ice, and scoot everybody back to shore and get dry and warm.
There isn’t any need for trained rescue personnel, Emergency teams, cold water survival suits or helicopters. It shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes, and there isn’t much danger to the rescuers of falling in themselves.
If I remember correctly, I wasn’t even wearing a PFD, we got the kid back into the cabin within minutes and into dry clothes and warmed up and went on with our day.
Easy Peasy. You might want to practice it sometime when it is warm, though.
See you On the Water!
Harmon