Open Water

The wave splashed from the left cheek to the right, pausing long enough to flood my nose. A wave a centimeter higher than what I was used to, floating off the beach. Waves that lapped, splashed, and sprayed as I daydreamed of to do lists, vacation plans, and heady decisions like staying out longer, getting my snorkel gear on, or heading in to take a nap under the palm trees.

Waking from sleep, your senses don’t boot up all at once. When a tiny wave waterboards you however, your senses all come on line at the same time. I took a breath as a reflex, only to inhale salt water from the one centimeter imp’s bigger brother. Coughing and sputtering I moved my feet down and head up to cough deliberately and take a breath. Moving from float to upright, you start start treading water. At that point, the cold hit me like a spike of frozen steel was running from head to toe, expanding inside my body.

Treading water I looked around to get my bearings. Water as far as I could see. Spinning around towards the beach I’d expected to see the palm trees and surf line within a thirty second swim. Instead, I was confronted with Kaluakoi Point to the left and Sweetheart Rock to the right. I was outside Hulopo’e Bay in the open ocean. By my estimate, a mile out to sea, home to currents, waves, sharks, drowning, and bodies never recovered. The spike morphed into a claw, dropped another several degrees Kelvin, and began to rake my guts.

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with the ocean. Actually, more of a love-fear relationship. I love everything about the ocean; calm surf and storm tossed waves, sand the consistency of confectioners’ sugar and rocky shores, palm trees and driftwood, fragrant Plumeria in the tropics and the earthy old ocean smell of a New England fishing village. I love it all.

I don’t know what gave birth to the fear. My dad taught me to dog paddle in the shallow end of a pool before I was school age. I took swimming classes during the summer when we weren’t on the gentle shallow beaches of Cape Cod. The only instance of fear I can recall was at summer camp. The entrance to the swim area at Camp Massapoag was an F shaped, floating dock. I was hanging onto the dock in the deep water, deep, that is, for a husky kid. I’d let my legs float up and down, lazing about when my feet broke the surface and I was dragged under. On my back, head suddenly underwater I was sliding beneath the dock. My seven year old imagination had me trapped under the dock, forever, probably drowned. The counselors wouldn’t even realize I was gone until the buses loaded at 3:30. Just then my Cub Scout training kicked in, I rolled over and swam out from under the dock, narrowly escaping a watery grave in clutches of Massapoag Pond.

Except for this one event, I have no reason to fear the ocean. Perhaps it’s just the understanding that adding water to a husky kid, chubby young man, or obese, out of shape adult could result in dead. At 55, with the epiphany that comes free of charge with open heart surgery, I decided to take care of this fear.

What is it, exactly, that I’m afraid of? The answer quite simply was downing. Shark attacks are dramatic but exceedingly rare, six to eight deaths every year. With a global population of 7.5 billion people, the odds of getting murdered by a shark are one in a billion. So the problem then is how do I not drown? Learn to swim in the ocean. What if I get tired? Float. OK, so my first step is to learn to float.

Over time I’ll lose weight and become a confident swimmer. Until then I’ll float with impunity. Floating on your back is not simply a matter of lying down in the water. You have to relax, let your feet float up as if they’re surfacing under a dock, allow your head to fall back like you’re being dragged under water, and allow the tension leave the rest of your body. Piece of cake if it weren’t for that seven year old at summer camp. I practiced, realizing that as women float their breasts pointing skyward are a testament to their success. For most men it’s their humble toes. The rising of mount lard belly from the depths showed that I was floating. So be it.

I practiced and practiced, getting used to water in my ears and around my nose and mouth. Gentle splashes across my face. Once you get past the shore break, you rise and fall with the swells and can start to relax. So relax I did, right to the point of dozing off and not realizing that the gentle swells deviously transported me out to sea.

After a minute or ten of treading water the claw changed back into a spike, and I reassessed the situation. Where the ocean hits Kaluakoi Point, water is forced through long extinct lava tubes to explode in geysers. The geysers were performing their show about a half mile in front of me. Sweetheart Rock and the unforgiving reefs bordering Shark Bay were a half mile to my right. The safety of the beach and the current that brought me to the very real prospect of drowning was a mile ahead.

With the swells and distance, no one would see me. Shouts for help would be drowned out by the waves crashing on the beach. Not that there were any lifeguards to help anyway. I put my head down, kicked slowly, and put the crawl in Australian Crawl. The distance between myself and the kid sliding under the docks at Camp Massapoag increased. And I made my first open water swim over the mile back to shore.