[Paddlewise] .....speak of the devil....

I just have to trot out this hackneyed mare jes' one 'mo 'gain, boss,
in light of the happy chain of events that could have just as easily
been tragic during tonight's paddling session.
	There was no surf really to speak of but I went anyway for as you know
'hope springs eternal' especially in the soft headed.  We have been
plagued for a month with intractable flatness, and any little blip on
the fnmoc modeling is worth checking out.
	I had with me a Patuxent 19'6" and a surf kayak (I always carry
two--because you never know and this is the Atlantic), it was so
dismally flat that I decided to take out the Patuxent and try to get
used to a wing blade with it...all very well and good.
	Heading South on Savannah beach for a little  to the area that we
sometimes surf in a longboat that we call alternately the 'triangle' or
'Pelican spit', and it was really kicking up --the back river of Tybee
filling with the advancing tide and a couple of cross swells.   It was
one of those times where the rebounding waves off the groins collide
with the advancing tide and swell and create their own pyrotechnics in
those spectacular collisions.  With the unfamiliarity of the wing blade
and the fact that the Patuxent wouldn't be my first choice  of play boat
in that mess, I just watched it for a time my hat in hand like a hobo
wistfully observing the Express careen by..... to points he wants to
go.  
	There have been several drowning there on an ingressing tide, (in fact
I helped pull one body out last summer in a surf boat), and I have seen
that that particular tidal race around that last sea wall leading to the
back river at low water,  and have had to walk my boat up it because I
couldn't make any headway against it.  But I've never seen  the degree
to which the  hydraulic action of the increasing tide affects the whole
mix.  Take it from me, it does.  A lot. 
	I waded in, serendipitously still wearing my  Pfd, and found with my
feet, the place where the tide really begins to suck on you southward
towards the back river, where the sands have been cut away in a four
foot deep hollow where some rip rap have been planted (all of this
submarine, mind you), "yep", thought I, "I can really feel it starting
to pull me now...."  "best back off or it will get you in earnest"......
too late.
	In I went into this suck hole and was being washed out to where the
nasty stuff awaited me....I started to stroke overhand and hard for the
slack water inside the groin......twenty or thirty hard strokes
later....I had made the *ten or fifteen* feet that put me into the
safety of the waters inside of the sea wall.  It was, needless to say a
bit unnerving, and I can easily see how panic could  set in in such a
situation.
	It wasn't but ten minutes when I spied four teenaged kids enter the
water not too far from where I had just had my little incident, and
resolved to keep an eye on them less they stray too far to the South and
the danger to which it seemed to me they were oblivious.  They got too
near and I yelled to them to wade Northward.  Sure enough, a girl and a
guy had entered the *Big Glub*....and she was screaming for help.  
	Have you seen the look in the eyes of someone who is in that level of
besetting panic? 
	I thought about launching the Patuxent but dismissed that as taking too
long, so I ran out on the sea wall and peeled off my pfd and frizbeed it
to her (it hit), she got it nearly on and started to calm down a bit and
the guy with her was using it also, they started to make some headway
against the race, and found their footing (albeit on oyster rakes, and
barnacle studded riprap)I got her hand and helped her up the first tier
of the sea wall.....I will never forget the look of relief and her
expressed gratitude for what little I did there.  I sent all four of
them down the beach to meditate on a newly erected sign warning of
dangerous currents in the area......(they promptly obeyed), bleeding,
trembling,.....*but laughing!*  After a few minutes I sat down with them
and we debriefed the situation a bit.  She said that she had remembered
to try to stay calm and use a side stroke.....but that it wasn't
working-- the current was just too strong.  She might have been all
right if she had relaxed and let the current take her up the river a
piece until it the current leveled out some and then make her way to
shore......but with the element of panic, I'm not so sure.
	I'm no hero .......but she sure thought I was.
	I learned two immediate things from this little episode.
	1.  Wear some sort of paddling shoe (I was). You might not be 	
planning on exiting your boat while surfing and dancing on an 
	oyster rake, but someone else might cut into  your dance, and 
	need your feet in one piece. 
	
	2.  From now on, a piece of equipment that will be on every
	boat--surfing or touring--is a throw rope.  If I'm on the water,
	there will be a throw rope around. (I didn't have one today).
	
	Also, I do admit to doing something that I think now somewhat silly: 
After I sent them to read the current warning sign, I turned to the boil
out there and screamed to no one in particular, " I cheated you, you
S.O.B.!"  (addressing death, not Deity.)....I'll just particularly watch
my step the next couple of times out there when  I surf in the sloppy
big stuff.
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