WET-WETTER-SOAKING. STORIES.

Not everyone is able to fully enjoy the experience of getting wet. It wouldn't be fair to blame them actually, especially early in spring or later in autumn. During our canoe trips the statistical 1% of the canoes get swamped (or just downside up), and mostly 2 wet men share the action. 2 women in a canoe almost never get swamped (4 canoes since 1992 when we started the canoe trips in Estonia); nor do the canoes with children in them. You are more likely to get into trouble if the person paddling and steering on the back bench is artistic and lyrical, restless and nervous or just talkative. The lyrical person is a li-ittle bit late with his (very rarely her) paddle at the critical moment; the restless one wants to control the situation - but you can't control the river, you have to be friendly and flexible with it-; and as for the talkative ones - WE don't know why they get swamped. But they do.

Actually the idea of getting swamped is much more terrifying than the reality itself. It happens so fast there is no time to get frightened. Your clothes stick to your body and an overall 36,6 C? surrounds you. Not for very long, though, if the water happens to be kind of cold. It will be somewhat depressing soon if you don't have another 'set' of clothes and footwear with you (or you do, but you hadn't packed it properly (=waterproof); or you had packed it properly, but the pack floated away.) But in summer there are always some teams who like to have some water in their canoe (about 1/3 of it) to cool their feet and create the atmosphere.

To make it easier to estimate your personal chances of survival, we'll try to point out the main risk factors: