Thursday, January 14, 2010

Don't rock the boat, baby

Not a secret: I am not a good swimmer. When I came to Thailand, I got nervous when I couldn't touch the bottom with my feet. As time went on I became comfortable with swimming in the ocean without worrying about the bottom, but I'm not generally confident in the water.

Last Sunday I went out in a little sit-on-top kayak while Autumn practiced windsurfing and Bert paddled around on a windsurf board without a sail, giving instruction. I'm totally comfortable in a kayak and enjoyed myself immensely, actually. But after a long couple of hours in the sun, when my hands were sore and I was ready to go back to the beach, my kayak started rocking violently with each wave. I was maybe hundred meters from shore, and had some flashes of panic as I realized that there was more water than appropriate in the bottom of the kayak, and it really wasn't supposed to be so tippy.

And then I capsized. And I'm very impressed with myself, in hindsight, for not completely flipping out in panic at that point. I'm not a good swimmer, I was far from shore, and the water here wasn't clear enough to see but I knew that jellyfish loomed in those murky depths. I couldn't get the boat back over, and I yelled for Autumn who was paddling on one board while Bert was farther away on the one with the sail. As it turns out, there was an important plug that had disapparated and my kayak had slowly filled with water. I hoisted myself onto the extra windsurf board and paddled back, while Bert saved the day (or at least the kayak) by windsurfing to shore with Autumn on the back of his board, dragging the waterlogged kayak.

We drained an impressive amount of water out of that thing when we got it back to shore.

Bert's sunglasses were unfortunately lost when the boat tipped over, but praise Poseidon that my (waterproof) camera did not drift out of my dress pocket when I was treading water. I could not otherwise have shared Autumn's windsurfing.

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