a sudden thunderstorm<\/a> last week.<\/p>\nThe kayaker, an older man who has been paddling the Potomac for the last 25 years, had been caught off guard by heavy winds and rain on June 11. Forced out of his kayak by the waves, he was left stranded in the river and unsuccessfully tried to catch the attention of several other vessels before boaters Orlando Karpf and Madison Cutlip heard his cries for help.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what would have happened had you not heard me when you did,\u201d the kayaker wrote in an email shared with ARLnow. \u201cI had been in the water for quite awhile and had developed a game plan for when the storm let up. Who knows when that would have happened and what condition I would have been in when it did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karpf recalled that he was taking Cutlip, her mother and some other passengers on a cruise from The Wharf in D.C. to Georgetown when he hit some unexpectedly strong winds that evening.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a beautiful day, and then that storm came out of nowhere,\u201d Karpf told ARLnow. \u201cI look over to the west, and I\u2019m like, dude, those clouds look pretty gnarly. I\u2019m like, we should probably get moving.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karpf had Cutlip, his girlfriend, take the helm while he attended to some canvas that was flapping in the gusts. He was on the upper level of his vessel, roughly in line with the Washington Monument, when he heard someone shouting for help.<\/p>\n
\u201cA few seconds later, I hear it again \u2014 and that\u2019s when I lock in onto the dude who\u2019s, like, floating in the water,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Karpf rushed to the helm to tell Cutlip, who immediately tied a throwable device to a rope and tossed it into the water amid the downpour.<\/p>\n
The man in the river grabbed hold. Appearing \u201ccompletely exhausted,\u201d he had to catch his breath for a couple minutes before he was able to pull himself up to the swim ladder and climb aboard.<\/p>\n
The kayaker, a Herndon resident, said he usually paddles the Potomac about two or three times a week and is attentive to the weather. Like Karpf, however, he didn\u2019t realize how strong this storm would be.<\/p>\n
He said the sky darkened as he was heading past Memorial Bridge, trying to reach an inlet. By the time he was midway there, \u201cthe wind and waves were coming sideways.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI almost made it to the inlet when I was hit with 3 successive waves which filled the cockpit and I went in,\u201d the kayaker wrote. \u201cUnfortunately, once I was able to get out of the kayak and surface, the kayak was beyond reach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Left adrift in the middle of a thunderstorm, he said he called out to several other boats, \u201cbut they couldn\u2019t hear me yell for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cQuite frankly, the fact you were even on the river in that storm, and someone must have been outside the cabin in order to hear me, was somewhat miraculous in itself,\u201d the kayaker wrote. \u201cAgain, I don\u2019t know what would have happened had you not come along. I do know that because you did, took the time to rescue me and make sure I was OK, I am in a position to thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once the man was safely on the yacht, Karpf radioed a distress call and got in touch with the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, who met them at Columbia Island.<\/p>\n
Karpf, a boat captain who runs a boat rental business, said the experience hammers home the importance of safety on the water.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople really underestimate the river,\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter how experienced you are, you\u2019ve got to be careful, especially [with] these crazy storms that we get.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karpf said he\u2019s still processing the whole experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s still kind of shocking to realize, like, s\u2014, man, I actually saved someone\u2019s life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boats at The Wharf in D.C. prior to the storm on June 11 (courtesy of Orlando Karpf) The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1269,2444,115,139,141,140,130553,723,4503],"class_list":["post-313677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-boating","tag-good-samaritan","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-potomac-river","tag-rescue","tag-storm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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