Spring Brings Hard Lessons for Anglers, Hikers

Experience keeps a hard school, it's said. This spring brought harsh lessons when three athletes drowned in the Gulf of Mexico after their fishing boat flipped, then a boy and a man died in the swollen Potomac River while fishing near Chain Bridge.

Sometimes things play out better, as in the case of the visually impaired hiker who got lost last week, then waited patiently for six days before being found off the Appalachian Trail in Virginia.

All the cases are instructive. With the football players, the lesson is about anchoring and how not to do it. The Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission interviewed the lone survivor of the accident that took the lives of NFL players Marquis Cooper and Corey Smith and their friend William Bleakley.

Nick Schuyler, 24, survived 46 hours clinging to the overturned hull of Cooper's 21-footer in rough seas 50 miles offshore. He told investigators the men had tried to retrieve their anchor and head for home as winds kicked up, but it was fouled in 138 feet of water. Someone suggested tying the anchor line to the stern to yank the anchor free with the force of the 200-h.p. outboard.

That was a bad idea. When the anchor failed to break loose, tension on the line pulled the stern under. Waves cascaded in, flipping the boat. With water temperatures in the mid-60s, only Schuyler, a physical trainer, survived the two-day ordeal. "Anchoring off the stern is insanity in moderate to heavy seas," retired Coast Guard senior chief Tom Rau later told the boating magazine Soundings.

The boy who drowned in the Potomac and the man lost trying to save him are the latest in a long list of victims of the river. Little Falls, the area near Chain Bridge where they went in, is among the Potomac's worst stretches. The river squeezes through a deep, narrow, rocky chute and drops sharply. In normal conditions it's treacherous; in high water it's deadly.

Jorge Castro, 11, was fishing with his father, Elijio Ramirez, when he fell in and was swept under. Ramirez jumped in to save him but was unsuccessful. Hau Nguyen, 37, apparently tried as well, but succumbed to powerful currents and went under. Two bodies floated up near Fletcher's Boathouse last week, ending a week-long search.

Having paddled a canoe down Little Falls in summer (in the company of experts and wearing a life jacket), I can attest to the force of currents there -- even in low water. The Potomac may look placid on a calm, spring day but the lesson of its latest victims is simple: Don't be fooled.

The case of missing hiker Ken Knight ended favorably last week when he was found after nearly a week near Glasgow, Va. The 41-year-old Ann Arbor, Mich., resident has severely limited eyesight but is a keen hiker.

He was on a week-long, 75-mile backpacking trek along the Appalachian Trail in preparation for a planned two-week hike across Scotland later this spring. He left with a group of seven on April 22, bound for Peaks of Otter. By April 26, two hikers had dropped out; the group was down to five.

Knight said he's a slow hiker and often brings up the rear as he picks his way along by feel. "I can see a [trail] blaze mark on a tree if I'm next to it," he said, "but I can't see the one ahead." Hiking by himself on April 26, he said, he suddenly realized he'd wandered off the trail. "I made a mistake. I stepped off the trail. I knew it quickly but when I realized it, I couldn't see where to go."

It was early evening. He reckoned he was about 1 1/2 miles from the group's next meeting place, the shelter at John's Hollow. He waited a while in hopes someone would come along, but eventually decided to find water and make camp. He had food for a few days but little water.