My First Time on the Water

Rhea Chettypally

The wetsuit I was given to change into smelled funky, like a mix of soap, Dettol, and fabric cleaner. I walked over to get my Crocs while rocks stabbed at my bare feet. In the distance, you could hear seagulls calling to one another. One of my Crocs had a large hole, which unfortunately made it easy for sand to get in, but otherwise, they were in pretty good condition. One of my crocs was white and the other one was black. Once I had chosen my mismatched crocs, I got in line to access a rickety old stall to change.

“You can go ahead of us,” said the adults in front of me.

“Thanks,” I replied.

As I waited for a stall to open, I looked around, noticing the kayaks to the left. The kayaks were all lined up in neat rows and they were also very brightly colored on the beach.

Finally a stall door creaked open and I entered with my stuff. I tried to change as quickly as possible. As soon as I was done, I left and let the next person go.

Afterward, when everyone was all ready, we walked over the paddle area where we received our paddles. The paddle was almost twice my size, and I had some trouble maneuvering it while walking to the kayaks with the rest of the group. Once we got there, our instructors told us how to kayak, what positions you should take when you get on the kayak, emergency procedures, etc. Finally it was time to move the kayaks to the shore where we could begin our journey across the Channel Islands.

My kayak partner, Ava, and I put our paddles in the kayak and started to carry it to the shore. I was surprised to see how heavy it was. That’s when I felt the string that helped us to lift the kayak up, snap. The kayak fell to the ground with a thunk. We were only halfway there and we were both clueless about what to do.

Luckily there happened to be an instructor behind us, “Need some help?”

“Yeah,” I replied, relieved that I wouldn’t have to carry the kayak.

He gestured toward the piece of string that snapped off. I gave it to him, and then he tied the string back onto the kayak. He took Ava’s place and started lifting one end of the kayak. I walked over to do the same on the other. Together we managed to get our kayak to shore, even though he did most of the work.

Ava and I got in the kayak, with the instructor pushing our kayak into the ocean. Soon we were off, kayaking around the beautiful Channel Islands. I noticed the seaweed, which looked like it was clumped around the Channel Island and thinned out as it got farther and farther from the island. I dipped my hand in the water and felt more relaxed because of the cold water against my warm skin. Our instructor had told us before that we would be taking short breaks to cool down and to receive instructions.

As I looked ahead I saw our instructors huddling together in their kayaks along with a few other students. Ava and I made our way over to where the rest of our group was and listened for instructions.

Still listening to the instructor, I looked around, took a deep breath and felt calm and peaceful. I vividly remember the warm afternoon sun shining down on us while the cool water was underneath us. It reminds me of going to the beach on a sunny day or eating ice cream on a bench with sunny weather.

Our group started to move again. Ava and I followed the rest of our group to the next location. The group then started to slow down, meaning that we were nearing our intended location. When Ava and I finally joined the rest of the group we were met with an enormous rock in the silhouette of an elephant. You could see where the trunk started and ended, as well as the elephant's body and head. Our instructor talked about it and then we began on the next part of our journey, which in my opinion was the most challenging but also the most exciting part.

The group then maneuvered around the giant elephant rock and kept going. Eventually, we got to the obstacle. It looked like a cliff with a big hole near the bottom, similar to a sea cave. There was also an exit to the other side of the sea cave, near the right. The piece of rock in between the two exits looked like a very thick pillar. I tried to peer through and saw a hole in the cave where it looked like a mini beach, with sand and lots of rocks. The insides of the cave and the outer parts of the cave looked very jagged. They were so sharp that it looked like you would get injured if you put your hands on them.

“If you’re going to hit a wall, make sure to use your paddle to push off of the rock,” our instructor said, raising his paddle up and stabbing the air to show us how.

After our instructor was done, our group started to line up to go through the obstacle. Everyone’s turn came and went. The pressure was on. As the people in front of us went, I started to become stressed. What if I got hurt? What if our kayak flipped? All sorts of questions came to me and I started to doubt if I could really do this. We were almost at the front, so I peered in and I realized that there were also very sharp turns that I might not be able to pull off. Then they were out, and it was our turn.

I pulled myself together and tried to focus on the issue at hand. I put my paddle into the water and pushed backwards, which helped to propel us forward. Then I switched to the other side and did the same on that side. As we neared the entrance of the cave, I started to hear the water rushing and our instructors yelling at us over the sound of the water to be careful and use the correct motions to paddle. I felt as if the walls were closing in around us, with their pointy edges, forcing us to move forward. As Ava and I moved forward, I got a better look inside and noticed how dark it was inside. We started to paddle and all seemed to be going fine. That was until we hit the turn. Our kayak swerved to the left, which put us extremely close to the rock. I now noticed the rock that extended above our heads. I was frozen. “This is it,” I thought. But luckily, Ava quickly pushed off of the rock near our heads, which prevented us from scraping against the rock. It made an unpleasant grating sound because the paddle was grinding against the hard rock, but it did help and our kayak started to move away from the rock.

All through this, our instructor was yelling over the sound of the water to push away from the rock, like Ava had done, and paddle some sort of way. I didn’t manage to catch which way though. We managed to proceed without any injuries.

But then we got closer to the beach looking part. I noticed the water reflecting off of the wall to the right, which came back to us and pushed us more left. Our kayak was starting to drift toward the rock beach part. I haphazardly pushed my paddle in a way that was supposed to help us get away but instead we were quickly nearing the rocks. I didn’t know what to do. My breath was ragged, and my hands were sore and hurt like they were burning. I could tell Ava didn’t know what to do either because she seemed confused about what to do with her paddle. There were no rocks near us that we could push off of. If our kayak got caught on the rocks it wouldn’t be the end of our lives but it would definitely stop our kayak and make it hard to start again. I could hear our instructors yelling at us, shouting at us to push. I felt useless. What should I do now? I desperately tried to push my paddle so that we could turn and get out of here, but to no avail. We kept heading straight for the rocks. All of a sudden one of the other instructors came out of nowhere and quickly pushed our kayak out of the danger of the rocks to the left. We said our thanks and were forced to keep going because of the tough situation we were in. Thankfully, we got out of there and we were able to go on our way.

As we continued our journey, we got to see and explore a beautiful sea cave, which was a lot less dangerous than the previous one. Near the entrance of the sea cave was tons of moss and lush green life.

“Quiet down! We’re about to see some baby animals!” our instructor said before entering.

We all followed after him as he took us inside. I looked around and noticed the walls looked more smooth instead of rough. It also echoed a lot, hence why we had to be quiet. If we were too loud it would scare the animals that were in there and they would swim away. We kayaked as close as we could and then had to come to a stop. There, swimming just below the surface of the water, were baby otters. They flicked their tails, they sped up and slowed down, and they even swam under our kayaks which was extremely exhilarating. As soon as they went under our kayaks, everybody started to try and find where they were.

Suddenly somebody whisper-shouted, “I see them,” pointing to a place right underneath one of our kayak instructors' kayaks, “Right there!”

Everybody’s gaze immediately flew to that area. We all got to watch them play for a little while and then started to head back to the Channel Islands so we could go eat lunch.

I learned on this trip that failure is necessary to become successful in anything. If you never try you can never fail. If you never fail then you won't learn anything in the long run. Failure is important to my identity because it teaches me forgiveness and how to bounce back from failure. When we went through that obstacle, there was an option to go around and avoid the obstacle completely. If I had taken it I would have never failed and would never have learned anything. For everything you do there is an amount of risk tied to it. Only you can decide how much risk you want to take. On this trip I learned that failure is inevitable. But failure makes us who we are, we all experience failure and only by learning from it can we change.