This past weekend, Bill and I went to my friend’s sister’s house at the beach. It was the perfect time to go as it had gotten hot, Hot, HOT. It was a full house with the sister (Mary) and her husband (Ron), my friend Suzie, Suzie and Mary’s nieces Katherine and Emily, Ron’s son, Louie, and then Bill and myself. Oh, and don’t let me forget Suzie and Mary’s dogs, Isabelle and Sam. (Names have been misspelled to protect the innocent.) The photograph is the gift basket I put together as a hostell gift. I had wanted to put it in a sand pail but when you want to find a decent sized one, you can’t. All I could find were small ones. So I had to settle for a basket. I embellished kitchen towels myself with fabric. Bill made homemade granola from this recipe, and we put in some fresh fruit to round it out. I thought it looked nice.

We arrived late on Friday and after a full day of work, Bill and I hit the hay. Saturday started with a hearty breakfast and one of the neighborhood cafes. We were well-fortified for a kayaking adventure. And adventure it was. Bill and I had brought our two-man kayak with us. We rented to kayaks and a small two-person sailboat. And out onto the water we went. Bill and I ended up going our separate way, not for any particular reason except I was interested on what the shore looked like on the other side of the bay. So we headed straight across the choppy water. Suzie and Katherine caught up with us at one point to let us know that they had run over Mary on a kayak, but she was okay. The retelling of the story involved a lot of laughing so it hadn’t been serious. Then they went their own way and Bill and I decided to head back to where we started. Heading back, we were going into the wind and the paddling was a lot harder. We ended up taking on some water as the swells crashed onto us, and then we turned a little and the water started to swish in the kayak and a wave hit us and out of the kayak went me and Bill. We both knew it was going to happen, I was laughing and Bill trying to plan his exit so as to not get hit by the kayak, paddles, water bottles, sea turtles, etc. We had our life jackets on so there was no panic. But we did bob up and down for a good ten minutes not really knowing how we were going to get back to shore. The kayak was completely full of water and the only way to unfill it was to take it to shore and dump it. Shore was a good distance away and the kayak was not very dragable at this point. Bill tried to use a water bottle to get the water out and it worked for about two seconds until a wave hit and filled the kayak again. Thankfully, a guy on a jet ski came to see if we needed help (Yes!) and radioed for another guy to bring a rope to tow the kayak in. (Yay!) We got the kayak attached, Bill got on the back of one jet ski, leaving me bobbing in the water with the paddles and water bottles. (Thanks) I used the rope to pull myself to the jetski, got everything loaded on, pulled myself up and off we went. Well, off Bill went. The guy who rescued him was the guy who went around to tell jetski renters their time was up and they had to return the jetski. The guy took off full throttle and Bill thought he was going to die. His hat flew in front of his face, he couldn’t see, had no idea where he was going or who was in the way. On the other jetski, I was going a whopping mile an hour, towing my sad, water logged kayak. I thought Bill was going to get off his jet ski and kiss the sand.

We did make it back to shore and dragged the kayak on to the sand, talking about how everyone else was going to laugh at us once we shared the experience. Except that there was Katherine to tell us Mary and Suzie were stranded because the mast of their sailboat snapped and they were waiting for help. That help too an hour because the boat that was sent out to rescue them was breaking down and had to turn back and they had to radio for another boat. In the meantime, Emily is aiding in the rescue, trying to direct the cute rescuers to Suzie and Mary who ended up having drifted a great distance.

However, Bill and I were not at the beach where the car is parked. Bill was very prepared to walk to the car, but I thought we could dump the water from the kayak and paddle back to the car. He politely disagreed feeling that one rescue per day was enough. I thought we would be fine, giving him at least two reasons why I believed so. First, it took an hour for the kayak to fill up last time and we would only be in the water for 20 minutes maximum, and second, we would stay close to shore which we should have done in the first place so that if we filled up again (unlikely) we could this time swim to shore. He was not as convinced as I was, but got back in the kayak and you will be relieved to know we made it back without incident. I think he was also reassured because we had told Katherine if she didn’t see us in an hour to call the Coast Guard.

Once back at the beach where the car was parked, Bill, Katherine and I sat around for an hour waiting for Suzie, Mary, and Emily and eventually we were all reunited, exhausted from near-death experiences. The rest of the weekend was much less life threatening. We relaxed on the beach for a few hours Sunday, then relaxed at the pool, then went out to dinner, and then drove home.

Sadly, there are no pictures of the near death experiences. But it happened. And, I have to say that while Bill and I were spilling our of our kayak and bobbing hopelessly in the water, not a harsh word was said. Yay us!