From my earlier post today on another thread about tethers/leashes....
A word of caution about leashes and tethers of all types. From this weekend. I was passing thru a small cut wash out on a sand island. As I passed thru to the other side I came upon a VERY fast moving current. The other side had a steep drop off to 10-12ft. There was a boat just abot 10-15ft down current from me anchored up with about 50ft of line out from about a 7ft high off the water bow. I miss judged the speed of the current and got swept under the anchor line. All rods where in the up-right position and one went over and the leash hung up in the anchor line. As you can guess a line around a a static anchor line or any unmovable object in a current will cause it to slide down the object/line. It was pulling the yak and me down. Then the paddel leash did the same. I was hanging on the anchor rope to keep the whole shabang from going down. I rolled out I put my hand down to my ankle for what I hand been trained to do my whole Navy career. Go for your dive knife and do an emergency cut away. """Oh wait smart guy you just bought a new Leatherman,, you don't need that dive knife anymore.""" Morale of this event was practice emergency action drills and always use the SAME course of action. It needs to be on auto reflex. If you leash, then have the emergency cut away IMMEDIATLEY ready for action, as in slash and its done. No unfolding or fumbling. It needs to be on auto reflex. And this holds for wiring or fighting big fish close aboard, and doubley for being solo. Be ready to zip it. In Naval Special Warfare I was thought this,,,"2 is 1 and 1 is none." Which means if you have two of something it only counts as having one as one of them is sure to fail or be lost. And if you only have one of something,,, well,,,,
I can only imagine the cluster if this had happened in my AI. I'm still doing mental drills in the backyard on the AI about it all. Anyway the Leash,,,,it needs to be FULLY worked into the plan. FULLY