Indian Country

[BCU 4 Star Training with Shawna Franklin and Leon Sommé of Body Boat Blade International]

I sit in the upstairs breakfast room of Best Bays Inn, a cozy little run down hotel in the converted military base that is now the Makah Tribal Center.  It’s around 7:30 AM and the other students are making breakfast and packing lunches, already with their drysuits half on and tied up at the waist.  It seems so quiet, and there is very little chatting. Is everyone really anxious or just not friendly?  Over breakfast they study the tide tables and currents and jot data down with grease pencils on their laminated charts.  “You're not in Baja anymore!” I think to myself.  It’s time to snap out of vacation mode.  I pick at my peeling sunburned forearms.  I feel like I’m in the recurring nightmare I have where I show up in calculus class without having done my problem set.  “Um, Leon… can I use some of your coffee for my thermos today?”  Other than lunch and some spare clothes, I didn’t bring any “kit” – no chart, compass, dividers, grease pencil, tidal data, VHF radio, spare paddle, paddle float, bilge pump, bivy bag, repair or first aid kit….  Hell, I didn’t even bring my own kayak, since I arranged to borrow an Explorer LV from Shawna and Leon.  So I’ve already gotten an “F” for the “kit” requirement today.

There are 6 students total in our class and 3 instructors.  The course is designed to teach kayaking in “the 4 Star environment” – also known as “moderate conditions”.  For class this morning that means west wind speed 10-15 knots, wind waves 1-2 feet and swell coming from the west at 5 feet, 11 seconds.  On the beach it translates to surf waves 3-4 feet.  The surf doesn’t sound very big but sitting low in a kayak that means waves over your head.

I had only been in surf once before so I’m very intimidated, looking at this breaking wall of water rush toward me as we “break out”.   I punch through the waves and it’s a great feeling, sitting safely with the rest of the group beyond the surf zone in the swell.  I do a roll to celebrate.  Now we head back through the surf one at a time, trying not to surf the waves and staying in control.  The idea is to keep an eye out behind you for the waves forming and when they are right behind you backpaddle so they don’t pick you up and surf you to the beach.  A big green wall of water rises behind me -- “Holy shit!”  I backpaddle but it just picks me up and throws me forward.   My bow digs in and the wave starts to break around me and push me sideways.  I brace into it and I keep sliding sideways all the way to the beach.  That’s called a “bongo slide” and it doesn’t count as a controlled entry, but it keeps me upright and I’m just happy I didn’t get rolled over repeatedly in the “spin cycle”.

Later Leon leads us out to the rocks.   For most of the morning we follow a course plotted to keep us away from the “boomers”, the rocks lying just beneath the surface that uncover when the swell comes in and an explodes over them.   But now he's leading us close into the rocks and boomers.  The water surges in and picks us up 5 feet along the vertical face of a rock covered with mussels and starfish.  When the water empties out it leaves a big hole with more rocks at the bottom.  “Come in as close as you feel comfortable,” he says.  I keep my distance.

We follow Leon single file through a narrow passage between a rock and a cliff .  Suddenly a big waves surges in.   I backpaddle as the wave throws the student in front of me into the passage, turning her sideways and dragging her upside down against the rocks.  “Holy shit!  Did you see that!”   She gets out of her kayak sputtering but seems to be OK.  “Get her out of there!”  Leon yells.   Another instructor Matt does an “extraction”, pulling her away from the rocks as she holds on to the end toggle of his kayak with one hand and to her own boat with the other.  Her kayak, a shiny new NDK Romany, has two holes in the front deck that go into to the fore compartment and a cracked rear bulkhead.

We land at a protected beach for lunch.  Early that morning one of our students started to feel ill and he had been paddling a safe distance from all the action.  On the beach Shawna and Leon give him a warm jacket to wear and some hot fluids because he’s complaining of feeling weak and cold.  At lunch he says the jacket is making him feel claustrophobic, so he takes it off.  He says he’s feeling a little short of breath.  Another  student, a paramedic, starts asking him if he has any pain in his chest.  “It feels like my lungs hurt,” he says.   Shawna and Leon take the paramedic and me aside.  “Can we get your professional opinion on this?” they ask us.  “Well, I don’t know what it is, but it could potentially be very serious” I say.  I go back and ask him about what he was feeling.  “Does this feel like your asthma?  Do you feel nauseated?  Do you have any pain going into your arm?  Have you ever had heart trouble?  Do you smoke?  Do you have high blood pressure?  Do you have any allergies?  How old are you?”  It turns out that he 55 and is very athletic and works out regularly.  We give him an aspirin to chew and swallow.   “Just in case it’s your heart,” I say.

Shawna, Leon and Matt put together a plan..  Matt paddles back to the put-in to get the van.  We arrange a “rafted tow” where we put our victim in his kayak and I hold his boat steady while sitting in my own kayak, and two other students tow us over to the next beach which has access to a road.  For going back through the surf we have one person towing us in front and another in back to serve as an anchor.  We go through the surf slowly and in control.  Matt meets us with the van and Leon drives the student to the Indian Health clinic in town.

The rest of us practice more rock gardening and surf.  As we paddle our way back to the put-in we see the cars but not the white van so Leon hasn’t returned from town yet and has been gone a few hours.  Hmmm, it sure is taking him a while.  I make my way in through the surf, bongo sliding again, and finally see Leon on the beach.  “How is he?” I ask.  “He’s been airlifted by helicopter to Seattle,” he says.  “He had an inferior MI!"  “Holy shit!” I say.   I can’t believe it!  A big heart attack seemed so unlikely given his good general health.  “Well, we did everything right,” I say.

This course really pushed me to my limits.  Every time I go out with Shawna, Leon and Matt I leave feeling like I have learned so much, but humbled by how much more there is to learn.   The second day of class I only said “holy shit” half as many times as the first so I think I was getting more comfortable in the conditions.  Getting those BCU stars would require me to practice a lot more in wind and surf, so I’ll think about it as maybe a long term goal.  For now I’ll just go back to the warm pool and keep practicing all those cool Greenland rolls!

Comments

[Thomas Duncan]

Wow! Good job all. I hope the fellow turns out OK with treatment in Seattle.

[alex]

That's crazy stuff. Thanks for the recap. I'd love to try some rock gardening some day.

[bonnie]

read this earlier but...man. that's amazing. As I said over on Kayak Wisconsin, I hope I never end up in a situation where a scenario I'm theoretically being trained for is suddenly actually happening for real, fun & games time over.

Sounds like you guys did great. Going out on a limb a bit, I betcha Shawna & Leon will not forget that when you go for assessment.