EPTWe also invited the distant cousins (with younger children, 9 and 7) and another set of cousins with young children (7 and 5). Two sets of grandparents, my girlfriend, my sister, and her boyfriend. Needless to say, there were a lot of us with rather varying interests. What I really wanted to do, though, was get a chance to catch some waves.
I'm not a huge surfer - I live in Michigan for crying out loud. And it always takes me awhile to get the hang of it again once I do get back in some water with nice waves. But I bought myself a nice board in Hawaii, and some surfing gear when I spent some time in California. I'd say I'm more of a huge fan than an expert. But I've spent probably a good few months of the last 10 years learning to surf and teaching myself to surf after a few lessons. I swam in high school and swim often in college, so I'm a pretty strong swimmer. I enjoy my time in the ocean, tl;dr.
But this afternoon I had an experience I don't think I'll soon forget. It has been unbelievably warm this week - upper 90's and 100's, meaning the water has been absolutely amazing. Around 8am EST I woke up, grabbed some breakfast, kissed my GF goodbye (they were going out for a long day of shopping), grabbed my board and hopped in my dad's truck to find a good spot for some waves down the beach.
The second day of the trip, I was lucky enough to run into a shoal (shoal?) of dolphins, and while I didn't get to technically swim with them, I boarded through them and around them for awhile as they chased fish through my surfing area. A bunch of local surfers seemed less interested in the dolphins than they did the waves, so I assumed they were a natural occurrence. This seems unimportant now but comes up again later, I promise.
Around noon, the surf was dying down and I was getting pretty tired, so I ran into a local fish fry to grab some lunch. (Fried tilapia, anyone? delicious). Around 1 I left and called my GF to see how she was doing. Apparently ALL of the cousins decided to come with them on their shopping adventure. I later got a text from her that said "I'd rather have ornery kids than weird ones." (One set of kids is really ornery and goofy, and the other kids are a little ... different). Her reasoning was that you can punish an ornery kid for being ornery and get him to stop, but weird kids will always be weird. Whatever, girl!
Anyways, I paddled back out around 1:30. I was having a great time and catching some awesome waves until I got absolutely pummeled when I rolled my left ankle trying to stand on a huge whitecap. My board slipped out from underneath me and I fell backwards, head first, into the waves. I had injured that same ankle a few days ago playing tennis (throughout my high school and college career it has always been a little flimsy), so I had attached my board around my right ankle instead of my left. Instinctively when I went under, I kicked my RIGHT foot to right myself, as that is the ankle that is usually not attached to my board. Unfortunately, since I had forgotten, my board came skimming right across the top of the water and connected with my forehead as I resurfaced.
I was actually seeing stars as I got mauled by another wave and went under again. I finally came up, clinging to my board for dear life, and felt my forehead. I had a pretty nice cut just above my left eyebrow. My hand was absolutely covered in blood. I clambered back onto my board and began paddling back to shore. Then I noticed that I was almost totally alone. The only surfers near me were at least three hundred yards down shore, and the immediate shore was about a hundred yards off.
Then I saw it... or at least I thought a did. A fin!
Initially, my heart jumped. Neat! More dolphins! I assumed another shoal was passing through, maybe even the same one I had seen a few days ago. Like an idiot, I reached my hand into the water and thrashed it around a bit, hoping I'd attract their attention. Then I saw it again. But this time, I saw what it was connected to. It swam about ten feet to my right, and I instantly identified it as a bull shark. Big nasty fucking teeth and about as long as my board - my board is 8 feet, to give you some perspective - I could see it looking at me from just under the water. I pulled my feet onto my board only to find that I was REALLY unstable in the waves, so I gently put them back in the water, all while keeping my eyes on this fucker.
My first idea was to fucking scream at the top of my lungs, but I was really afraid I would piss it off. So I sat there on my board, watching it swim. It swam off in front of me. It didn't really seem all that interested. I laid down flat on my board and slowly began to paddle towards shore.
At this point, I could make the story more interesting. I could spice it up a bit by telling you how I valiantly defended myself. But I was fucking shitting in my pants. I could feel my heart pounding against my board. It went underwater and I totally lost sight of it. Rule #1 for getting away from a shark: Know where the hell it is.
I broke rule #1.
About thirty seconds later, I caught a wave and rode it into a patch of water where I could finally see the bottom. I stood up. About three feet deep. I've never run so fast in my entire life. I told the nearby lifeguard on duty what I saw, and he called everyone out of the water as far as his voice could reach, while he radio'd in the incident.
Just thankful I'm still here to post. Hope you all are enjoying your summer.
Signing off,
Steve Irwin the II
caused me to read up on wikipedia on bull sharks and shark attacks and i found this gem on how to prevent getting attacked:
