submitted by Kendra Losee~
It was almost dark when I arrived at the race site. Several of my teammates held flashlights as they worked on the final preparations for the championship nine-man outrigger canoe race. We would be paddling the canoes for 26 miles across the channel from Newport to Catalina Island – there would be no room for errors.
I watched my friends for a minute as they struggled to pull the tight spray skirts onto the canoes before I moved to help. Working together, we pulled the skirts tightly across the length of each canoe, ensuring that the openings in the thick fabric were lined up with the seats. I tugged at the skirt on a canoe, trying not to think of paddling in it all the way to Catalina. We checked the zippers to ensure they worked and would keep the water out of the canoe during the race.
The next morning we finalized our preparations and found our escort boat – the boat that would follow our canoe with our coach and three additional racers so the six in the canoe could rotate out for short rest breaks. By the time we were ready to push off, anticipation filled everyone in our crew. I climbed into the canoe and pulled the skirt around me. I tried not to think about it as I zipped myself in. The problem with the spray skirt is that while they keep the water out of the canoe, they also keep you in. I hadn’t paddled using one in over a year and was nervous to be in one for the first time in a difficult five-hour race.
“Huki!” our steersman called, and all six of us in the canoe twisted forward simultaneously and placed the blade of our paddles in the water. We paddled the several miles to the starting line in long, slow strokes to stretch out our muscles. There is no feeling like it when the canoe is running well, gliding on top of the ocean’s swells, all of us in sync, paddling as one.
We stopped just before the starting line to wait for the other canoes to line up, I asked Tati, who was sitting in front of me, again for tips on getting out of the canoe without getting caught on the spray skirts. I watched as she demonstrated her technique for jumping out. The nine-man race required us to jump out of the canoe on the right side while one of the paddlers from the escort boat climbed in from the left.
The race started and all 60 canoes took off towards Catalina. When the time came to start our changes, I heard our coach on the escort boat call Tati’s name for her to rotate out but I was busy paddling and forgot to watch her. The next time I heard our coach call for a change, it was my turn.
I saw escort boat speed away to drop the next two paddlers into the water. I forced myself to focus on all of the changes I did right the last time I paddled with a spray skirt, not on the one change I did wrong.
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A year earlier, my team had arrived early at the Oceanside Harbor for one final long practice before the annual Catalina race. The sun was just coming up as we paddled out of the mouth of the harbor, two canoes and two escort boats filled with friends who are competitors and teammates, betting which canoe would arrive in Mission Bay first. We had 30 miles to find out.
Almost two hours into the trip, our steersman shouted, “One, three! Stow! Bail!” and Daria and I stowed our paddles and jumped out of the canoe. Mid-air my foot caught in the spray skirt. Landing in the water, it was too late, my leg stuck in the canoe. As I tried to come up for air, I couldn’t. My foot was stuck in the spray skirt, securing my calf across the top of the canoe, and dragging me along, underwater.
I tried to kick free, worried that I would flip the canoe. But kicking only pushed me further under. I was no longer concerned about flipping the canoe. Salt water began to fill my lungs and I struggled harder. My arms thrashed, trying to find something to push against to get me above the surface. I opened my mouth to scream, to lunge up for air, but salt water rushed in and I swallowed it in confused desperation. I needed to breath. I looked up and saw the surface but only the tips of my fingers could touch it. My chest burned as water replaced air in my lungs. The canoe kept dragging me. Why hadn’t it stopped? Hadn’t anyone noticed me? I tried to reach for the canoe again, to lunge for air. Trapped and feeling panic grip me, I pushed against the water, reaching for the canoe, reaching for air, all in a desire to breath, to survive.
Then I felt a hand on my foot. On the other side of the canoe, my replacement had tried to pull herself in but she couldn’t because my leg blocked the seat. I felt her hands tugging at the skirt, and suddenly my foot was free. I pushed off the side of the canoe with my leg and lunged up for air. I came up coughing and gasping, water pouring from my mouth. Tears filled my eyes as I coughed and took shallow gulps of air.
My friends in the escort boat had just realized what happened. They called out, asking me if I was okay. Unsure and unsteady, I asked if anyone had seen my headband that was now missing as I struggled to keep my head above the water. I took slow strokes to reach the escort boat.
Then the coughing started. Friends helped me up the ladder into the escort boat. The driver guided me to the front where I curled up on the seat and began coughing water over the side. Joking from my huddled position, I tried to reassure everyone—including myself— that I was okay.
Eventually my coughing slowed, and I grew weaker and quieter. I watched my friends continue paddling as the sun sparkled on the blue water. Before long I asked to go back in, thinking that if I started moving it would help cough more of the water out. I coughed my way through several rotations in the canoe until Christina, an EMT, suggested that whenever I felt the need to cough I should instead swallow, since after coughing for so long, I was just hurting myself.
X-rays later proved she was right.
My friend who went with me to Urgent Care managed to convince the doctor that I didn’t need to be psychoanalyzed for jumping out of a canoe. Luckily he canceled putting me on suicide watch.
He told me the combination of salt water and coughing had severely injured my lungs. My asthma had made it worse. A nurse hooked me up to an oxygen tank and monitored me until early evening. The doctor released me with a warning that someone had to observe me throughout the night in case I started dry drowning. His warning scared me. After what I’d already been through, I now had the possibility of the water in my lungs coming up, causing my throat to close off and suffocate me.
———————–
It took a long time for my lungs to heal, and they’re still not as strong as they were. I couldn’t paddle the championship race that year because I couldn’t breathe enough to sustain a workout. Friends asked me if I would ever paddle again.
The question surprised me every time I heard it. Why would I stop paddling?
“Because you almost died.”
Oh yeah, that.
“Seat two, seat four, stow! Bail!” I clipped my paddle in place, and jumped. My legs cleared the spray skirt and I landed with a splash in the water. I screamed in triumph when I surfaced. After all my fears that followed me throughout the year about paddling in a spray skirt, to be finally tested in the championship race. I had done it – safely and without near-drowning.
While the escort boat pulled around to pick us up, I lay back in the water and floated for a moment, closing my eyes in thanks.
Even when the timing in the canoe is off, or the crew is mismatched, or the water is rough – this is what I love. The twist of my body, feeling my muscles work as I pull my blade back, feeling the canoe glide into new water, and reaching out for more. Blue skies, deep blue water, friends cheering us on as we paddle. Fresh air in my lungs.
