Posted on 09/03/2018 6:10:14 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
The family from Loyal, Wisconsin, set out from Madeline Island in an open-top tandem kayak Thursday for a 4-mile (6-kilometer) paddle across open water to Michigan Island. But their 13½-foot (4-meter) kayak capsized after the wind picked up. Eric Fryman, 39, and his three children, Kyra, 9, Annaliese, 5, and Jansen, 3, were found dead in the frigid water. Only his wife, the children’s mother, Cari Mews-Fryman, 29, survived. All of them wore life jackets. Coast Guard officials said hypothermia was probably a major factor in the deaths, especially of the children.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
More:
The Coast Guard received the distress call about 8:45 p.m. and launched a small boat from Bayfield and a helicopter from Traverse City, Mich., said Coast Guard Lt. Daniel Peters. An emergency information message was sent to local mariners.
That was the message Walters heard on his ship about 9:20. By 10 p.m., he had rescued the woman, who was gripping the flashlight, too cold to speak.
Krumenaker, whose staff assisted with the rescue efforts, said the Apostle Islands are mostly undeveloped and forested, with rocky shorelines and long distances between each island.
“Some of the places that people want to go kayaking are incredibly attractive but also deceptively dangerous,” he said. “This particular incident happened in a place that is not often traversed by people on kayaks, and for good reason.”
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The safety plea is don’t do what these people did.
I took my wife and two sons (14 and 10) there mid august of 94. We paid for the ferry to haul us out to Stockton island where we camped a couple nights. The shallow bay was tolerable for swimming in the hot afternoon sun for maybe 15 minutes max. It was probably 10 degrees warmer than the deep water. It was interesting walking the island coastline and seeing where brown sandstone had been cut out and shipped for buildings far away.
I remember thinking on the ride out to the island that it was farther away that it seemed. There were no buildings on it to help give perspective of the distance we had to travel to reach it. Once there we noticed a couple arrive to the island using about a 14’ jonboat with probably at least a 35 hp motor. That seemed small to me, but my boating experience was and still is minimal.
I know my wife shed a few tears reading story online Saturday evening. Very sad.
Yep. These parents unwittingly committed familycide just as surely as if they all drank the kool-aid. Yet we are told how “tragic” it is, when the correct word is “stupid”.
A guy was peeing off the back of a boat while out fishing. The others looked back and he was gone. They could see him in the water, but the ten foot waves prevented them from reaching him before he drowned. Superior is a wicked and cold lake. This story was near Munising, Michigan many years ago.
A little early for the Witch of November to come calling.
Sounds like a ‘clueless neophyte plea’ would be more apt.
So sad. This lady is going to need some counseling, therapy, and prayers.
So sad..no way I’d take a kayak that far with kids, youngest 3 years old! no matter how experienced. Article says there was a storm warning as well..Lake Superior can turn into ocean like conditions in matter of minutes.
I led a lot of Boy Scout and Church canoe ventures. Did two 50 milers in the Boundary Waters. I gave up going regularly when I did three rescues in one day. Had a guy and his wife and three year old (not from our group) breach a canoe on the Niangua River in the Ozarks. He was across a root ball, lost his heavy glasses and couldn’t see and had his three year old by one hand on a wrist.
I launched out of my canoe and hoped my wife was experienced enough to keep away and swam / scrambled to them and took the child. The guy then was worried he had lost his beer cooler and his wife wouldn’t stop screaming. The day went downhill from there.
A canoe full of water breeched across something weighs about 2,500 pounds if you get between it and whatever it is athwart.
This story is a real heart-breaker.
This is all on the dad.
Attempting to paddle on Superior with babies is stupid. Paddling in open water in a shore craft is stupid. Even the most seasoned expert would think real hard about paddling that distance. The water is deadly cold, seriously deep and very, very strong. It’s nothing for a tiny shore craft like this to be overwhelmed in seconds.
Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world. This man should have known better.
I've kayaked close to 50 km on the lake at one time, but I was never farther than 400 yards from land, and I was wearing a drysuit. No way I'd venture into open water on that lake.
On a map Lake Superior looks like an angry wolf. More ships lost in it than the other Great Lakes combined, IIRC.
He rented the kayak from some outfitter and he should have discussed this open water with children plan with them.
Surely, they would have discouraged this plan and suggested an alternative safe family adventure.
RIP. I can’t even imagine her condition and fragile state of mind at this time.
“Coast Guard officials said hypothermia was probably a major factor in the deaths, especially of the children.”
They wouldn’t want to mention the stupidity of the parents now would they. We used to get these kayakers trying to go over an 8-foot man-made waterfall where the Clinton-Kalamazoo canal was supposed to go through and it was like they had “no fear”...More like no respect for the power of water and Mother Nature herself. I think it was in the summer of 1998 when in the span of two weeks, three of them, all in their 20’s, (one woman and two men) drowned doing the same damned thing. I have no doubt as I didn’t then either, that at least one of the 2nd and 3rd “victims” was there only because they’d seen and heard the news reports about the first incident.
“Have they never heard the Edmund Fitzgerald song?”
They OBVIOUSLY didn’t hear of that song. Anyone who has knows not to mess with that lake. No different from an ocean - it will swallow you up and spit you out, dead.
If a ship like the ‘Edmund Fitzgerald’ can sink, I would NOT go out in a 13 1/2 foot kayak. That would be like me going out into the gulf in a pedalboat. Sounds like a candidate for the Darwin award.
They are not.
They are fresh water seas with all that implies.
I read some statistic a while back that said something like 70% of male bodies that died by drowning in lakes had their trouser zipper down when they were recovered.
Superior is happy to kill your ass dead just any old time...
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