Rescue on the Bay

Yesterday a group of 8 or 10 people moved into the hut next to us (nice non-rowdy folks). They are here with a naturalist to study the area and also do some kayaking. Abraham had told us that the woman has brought people and kayaks here several times, so we assumed she was pretty savvy about taking people out paddling in these waters.

We paddle in the early morning while the water is fairly calm, but this morning I noticed that our neighbors were getting on the water late, after the winds had already started to pick up. Kai mentioned that the 2 'older' women (our age group ha-ha) in the double kayak seemed to be inexperienced and were having trouble getting the hang of steering the boat. We assumed they were just going to do some practice maneuvers close to shore today, but the whole group headed out across the bay instead.

The winds continued to get more vigorous and we used our binoculars to keep the paddlers in sight. We could barely see them against the opposite shore and they disappeared for awhile - probably went into a cove to have lunch. Later we sighted them again and it looked like they were trying to head back. It didn't seem like they were making much forward progress and in fact it looked like they were being blown out towards the mouth of the bay.

By then the winds had started blowing away from shore and the water was getting rougher. I went to alert Abraham and he prepared his boat to go out and check on them. Donna is the owner of Mariah http://www.mariahwe.com - a white water rafting company in northern California, and she's very familiar with water rescue so she grabbed a couple of our bagged rescue lines and went with Abraham.

When they reached the paddlers, the 2 women in the double kayak were totally exhausted and were being towed by Marie. They were still 2 or 3 miles from shore and one of the women could barely make it into Abraham's boat. He and Donna tied one of the kayaks across his bow and rigged 3 others for towing, while the stronger kayakers continued paddling to shore.

Abraham had mentioned that his boat was low on gas and we were concerned when he seemed to be drifting farther away. We found out later that it took a long time to secure all the boats before he could start towing them in slowly. Beach Bob had radioed an SOS to the sailboats anchored nearby and a couple of folks quickly motored out in dinghies to see if Abraham needed help with the rescue. He had everything under control by the time they arrived and he just laughed and yelled out, "I'm not giving you any of my boats or my women."

Fortunately there was a lull in the wind when they reached shore and they were able to unload everyone easily. Kai and I breathed a sigh of relief and said, "OK, now we don't have to worry anymore... back to our reading."