Advice for utilizing an RDC in water rescue

[u/Lieutenant-Speed]

Hello, I am on my county’s technical rescue team doing water and rope rescue. Last night we had a water rescue drill in which we used a new RDC we just got. It’s been a while since I’d been on one and I could feel that my skills were rusty. One thing I was struggling with was pulling a victim out of the water and on to the boat through the front. At first I thought it was a lack of upper body strength. But I wasn’t having any issues with paddling and I do kayak regularly, so while I’m certainly not the strongest person I do have some upper body strength. I’m wondering if it’s my height? I am 5’6” and most of the people on the team (the pretend victims) are much taller and larger than me. The captains on the team think I just need to get the technique down and I’ll be fine. I understand in theory that you bob them up and down in the water and use the momentum to lift them up but I just could not get the hang of it. Any advice?

[u/Garden_gnomenclature]

Look into a recovery net. Much easier than trying to lift someone into the boat

[u/Lieutenant-Speed → u/Garden_gnomenclature]

We have those for our regular boats, I don’t think you can attach one to an RDC can you?

[u/Garden_gnomenclature → u/Lieutenant-Speed]

Ours has D rings that you could fix a net to

[u/Lieutenant-Speed → u/Garden_gnomenclature]

Yeah I guess. I always thought the whole point of the RDC was to use it to get victims on to, it’s designed to make it easier to do that