[Paddlewise] A Sea Lion and a small boat

Several years ago I met a guy while at work that was working as a
electrical contractor.  One day I noticed that he was gluing some felt
soles on the bottom of a pair of chest waders and we got to talking about
flyfishing.  A couple of weeks later he invited me to join him and about
six others from his church to go flyfishing.  We headed up from the SF bay
area to the middle fork of the Toulumne river in the Sierra foothills.
After a great day of trout fishing we all sat around the fire to talk about
our day.  There was this one guy (let's call him Mark) that started telling
a fish story so I countered with one of my own.  We went back and forth
until he told the following:

Mark and two other guys took a 17' fishing skiff off the coast for a day of
salmon fishing.  The area they were fishing in was known as "the triangle".
The triangle runs from about Half Moon Bay (where they launched) out to the
Farollon Islands (just north of SF) and up to about Bodega Bay.  The
triangle is known for having quite a few sitings of great white sharks.

It was a calm day on the ocean and Mark was sitting near the stern gazing
off towards shore and waiting for a bite.  All of a sudden he heard a
splash behind him and one of the other guys (let's call him Bill) in the
boat came flying back and bumped into him, almost knocking Mark into the
water.  Bill said, "did you see that?  That sea lion came almost completely
out of the water."  The all turned around and looked toward the water as
the sea lion came out again, no more than 5' from the side of the boat,
coming completely out of the water and nearly slamming into the side of the
boat.  Mark said, "I've never seen a sea lion jump out of the water like
that...I wonder why he's doing that."  Before you could say the words
"great white shark" the sea lion came up again, this time, right next to
the boat, landed on one of the gunwales and flopped into the boat.

They now had about 250 pounds of frightened female sea lion in their small
boat, already crowded with three large men (Bill was a former lineman for
his college football team).  The sea lion bared it's teeth and went after
Bill toward the bow.  The skiff had one of those free standing center
steering consoles and Bill tried to keep it between him and the sea lion.
As he went toward the side the sea lion tried to cut him off by going
toward the stern then saw Mark sitting on the raised transom next to the
motor and directed his attention toward him.
Mark held out his fishing rod horizontal and tried to fend off the sea lion
and actually had it partially in it's mouth to keep the sea lion from
biting him.  Mark shifted over toward the corner of the boat and the sea
lion followed him up onto the transom.   Bill saw the opportunity and
charged the animal, lowered his shoulder and body blocked the lion back
over the side as Mark sat there in shock then said..."let's get the hell
out of here".

I threw up the white flag and said "ok, Mark, you win."  I could neve top
that one.

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