WHAT’S COMING IN BOATING INDUSTRY CANADA MAG FOR AUGUST?
TED RANKINE – MARINE INDUSTRY INNOVATOR and PIONEER
By Andy Adams
Canada’s marine industry would benefit greatly from having more people like Ted Rankine. As he told me once many years ago, “Andy, I’m a pioneer not a settler” and the great thing about pioneers is that they open up new areas that can take root and grow over time.
One of his most recent pioneering ideas is a thing called Cold Water Boot Camp, (http://www.coldwaterbootcamp.com/pages/home.html). Anglers, campers and recreational boaters of all sorts occasionally
find themselves out in the off-season when the water is cold. A mishap… even a moment landing a fish where you lose your balance, can send you into icy cold off-season water with potentially fatal results.
Even search and rescue professionals can’t imagine what it’s like to unexpectedly hit icy cold water until it happens to them, but several years ago, Ted Rankine learned that there is an involuntary ‘gasp’ reflex the instant a person hits that cold water and if they take in a big gulp of water, there is a risk they will become a fatality.
This ‘gasp’ reflex was not well known but this knowledge was the inspiration for Ted Rankine to create Cold Water Boot Camp and it’s just one of the most recent milestones in his life-long pioneering journey.
There are all whole host of reasons to celebrate Ted’s many accomplishments, so let’s go back to childhood and find out where he originally came from and how he got started.
The Rankine family was in the Maritimes, a seafaring family who moved to Ontario. As a child, Ted and his family would go out in their 16 foot Springbok aluminum boat with its 10 hp outboard, to spend the day on Lake Simcoe. He still has a home on the water there.
His love of the water attracted him to scuba diving and like everything else he does, Ted went into it at top speed and with maximum force becoming an instructor in his late teens and by his early 20s, paid his way through college by teaching other people to dive.
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