Hi
OldSteve, and everyone else.
Thanks for the note, and
Thanks to You too whom have welcomed me.
I joined years ago, mainly as I was deeply interested in The Meredith Kercher murder and The Trials of Amanda Knox,
Raffaele Sollectio and [SIZE=-2]Rudy Guede[/SIZE]. In the years it took to figure out that case, I learned much about the online debating thingy, researchin' + chattin' with others, etc.
Cool,
as it is helping me discuss other topics I might be interested in, such as this particularly odd case.
A case were everyone at 1st believed it was an "accident" that cost Vinny Viafore his life, but upon closer examination, it appears, well at least to this surfer/kayaker/ photographer, that Angelika helped cause Vinny's "accident". New York Police seem to believe this too.
In this "accident" Angelika would have earned $250,000.00.
Even though she + Vinny had no children together, nor a house in their name,
since Vinny was renting, and Angelika was staying there, I'd speculate, rent free,
as she had no job at the time.
Yep,
OldSteve, you are pretty observant,
that is a 6t surf leash attached to my Vinny kayak.
I learned years ago that a dude, or dude-ette, can not paddle a kayak anywhere,
without a paddle, as your hand will not suffice. Heck, I had to paddle out 1 day, a few years ago, my own kayak paddle offshore to a fisherman who had lost his un-teathered paddle while fighin' a fish here in the waters off Los Angeles. I was checkin' on him, usin' binoc's, saw him trying to paddle with 1 swim fin in his hand, laughed, grabbed my surfboard + kayak paddle, got to him, helped get a dude get back to the beach. He lost his crappy paddle, but reeled in a nice halibut!
I'm off-topic,
let me get back on track.
I'd like to talk about kayaks + waves,
as Angelika said it waves and that open drain-age hole that apparently caused Vinny to get tossed from his kayak into The Hudson River.
I've noticed that on The Hudson River near Bannerman Island,
most folks who paddle there, privately or in paid lessons, seem to paddle sit-inside kayaks.
Like in this photograph:
Or here,
as folks enjoy an evening paddle:
In
Rickshawfan's excellent post above,
he mentions that Vinny + Angelika's sit-inside kayaks do not have bulkheads, and the dangers that might cause. But yet I'd betcha that most, if not almost all of the sit-inside kayaks seen near Bannerman Island also do not have bulkheads in them. Odd how more people are not dying out there on The Hudson River, year in, year out, from paddling these kind of kayaks...
I'm an old surfer,
all I do nowadays is surf, shoot surfpix, kayak, sometimes look for sharks from a kayak.
I watched hundreds of waves today, shot some surfpix too. Here is my gallery, it might give some folks a clue to some of my experience with waves, here in Los Angeles:
http://www.lasurfpix.exposuremanager.com/
The waves on The Hudson are caused by local winds, if they blow hard enough, long enough, wind waves/wind swells, white caps will develop and form. These kind of waves are short lived, choppy, consistant, often in close proximity to each other.
Here's a photo of a dude paddling to Bannerman Island,
shot by his gal, posted on Yelp, titled
Crazy Waves:
The waves can and will go over his stern, without going into the *advertiser censored*-pit seating area.
Most do not believe this so...
Have any of you watched the recent ABC 20/20 show on this case we discuss?
If so, did you see the video showing the 2 screen grab pix I am posting?(
*)
Elizabeth Vargas is conversing with a dude whose last name I kinda dig, a dude named Wright.
As they converse,
a lil' wave has come over Wright's stern, carrying handle, and drain-age hole, which is plugged I hope!
See the 2nd lil' wave swelling behind Vargas's kayak paddle?
Let's see what it is going to do:
The 2nd wave has come up + over the stern, the carrying handle, the drain-age plug.
And Wright apparently does not even notice this...
When I kayak paddle,
I deal with waves, wind swell, white water, wind chops bigger than these waves.
Bigger than any waves that I have ever seen photographed or video's near Bannerman Island.
I hardly ever get much water in the *advertiser censored*-pit seating area. Even on my last good paddle in The Vinny's kayak, which took me about 10 hours as I covered over 28 miles roundtrip here in the waters off Los Angeles.
I try to keep an open mind in this case we discuss,
but when I look at this video clip that Angelika shot from the dock at Bannerman Island,
which she posted online + tagged as #alittlechoppy, amongst over tags,
https://www.instagram.com/p/pZbuHIKIs2/
well I just do not see these kinda choppy, white-capping wind waves,
possibly crashing into the side of Vinny's yak and coming up over and into the *advertiser censored*-pit
of Vinny's kayak as being the cause of his sinking.
It was the waves coming over his stern, as Angelika stated, that did it:
“We were already in the water. I’m like, ‘Yo, where’s your plug. Are you kidding me? I was mad at him,” she told investigators. “His boat starting to get lower in the water… because of the waves, because of the plug not being in there… [The kayak] started to fill up, and I knew that the plug wasn’t in there. I was like ‘oh this is not good.’"
My 2¢ only,
RW
(*) -
http://abcnews.go.com/US/york-kayak-murder-case-timeline-events-mysterious-death/story?id=34973210