A pair of good Samaritans rescued a kayaker knocked into the Potomac River without a life vest during a sudden thunderstorm last week.
The 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.
“I don’t know what would have happened had you not heard me when you did,” the kayaker wrote in an email shared with ARLnow. “I 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.”…