Humbling Experience

[jorluivil]

April 5, 2014, early AM………. Roby and I are sitting at the waters edge at LJ with kayaks in hand listening to the surf pound the shore. As we sit and wait for the lull I notice the window has come and I see Roby board his Revo but because my PA went sideways I was unable to launch right at that second. No more than 10 seconds go by and I decide to go anyway, NO GUTS NO GLORY!

Well, that attitude lead to me sitting in the white wash for at least a minute , the whole time water is constantly coming over the kayak. During this time I realized that the kayak would lean hard to the left and then to the right without notice, I couldn’t figure out why until I look down and notice that the entire deck is filled with water. Apparently, the water was sloshing side to side and that was causing the kayak to lean hard to the left or right. Add to this the fact that I had the drive plug installed, I’m assuming this was causing the water to not drain out, well, at least not as fast as it would have if the plug wasn’t installed. Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime of sitting in the kill zone I manage to make it through the surf. As soon as I reached Roby I took a minute to regain my composure, I wasn’t sure how I made it through the surf but I did.

Once I was in the clear I decide to go into my front hatch to pull my HDS unit out, as soon as I open the hatch I notice that the entire bucket/liner if filled to the top with water, literally to the top. I immediately start to panic and start to pull items out looking for my backpack which had my Nikon Coolpix camera in it. Fortunately, after taking everything out I realized that I had left the backpack in the truck because I didn’t want to anything else to mess with while I’m trying to figure out the kayak.

Landing time as arrived, gear is stored, rods are put away and Tony is sitting at the launch waiting for me to land, ‘NO GUTS NO GLORY”!!!! Shortly after back paddling and avoid what looked like a 3’ wave I decide to pedal and go for it. Well, pedaling as fast as possible worked against me because as soon as the smallest waves known to man came through my PA starts surfing. Not knowing what to expect I brace for the worst and into the drink I go.

Before I know it I am in the water and under the kayak, as soon as I try to come up I feel myself being pinned down under the kayak, I try to pick the kayak up (8:58 mark on the video) but it’s to heavy. Next I try to slide out but my PFD somehow gets caught on something and because it’s designed to float I can’t push myself down to slide under the kayak……I’m stuck and because I wasn’t prepared to go under I didn’t take a big breath of air. I am at the point where I am about to panic but I told myself that panicking would only make it worse. I somehow manage to slide out and immediately come up for air, when I did no one knew what I had just gone through. It felt like I was under the kayak for 1minute but it was more like 5-6 seconds.

Regardless, it was a humbling experience and all I can do is learn from it and share it hoping that others may learn from it. Anyone that has fished with me knows that I ALWAYS wear my PFD when I’m fishing, this just happened to be one of those events where the PFD worked against me. Fortunately, I remained calm and came out of it with no loss of gear, about the only thing that happened was that I had a plastic buckle break.

Fish on and be safe!