Runaway Paddle Board

June 1, 2014

Way back when we made the drive in a rental van from Santa Rosalia to San Diego and back, Tim had purchased three paddle boards: two inflatable and one rigid.  I was annoyed that he spent that much money on three, I mean why did we need three?  It’s not like a paddle board is the kind of thing you need to carry a spare of, right?  In fact, one of the inflatables never even made its way out of the locker it was stored in, that is, until we were in Tahanea.

Carolina and I had gone for a paddle, and I had used the rigid board, since it’s a little less stable than the inflatable one, and that night, for some reason, the boards were left in the water.  We try to enforce the rule that the boards get brought up and secured at night, and along with raising the dinghy, that responsibility falls on Alex and Brenden.  The next morning when I got up, the rigid board was gone.  This was one of those rare circumstances where I wished we were anchored on a lee shore, but it was not to be.  The wind was blowing along the long axis of the atoll, so the board could be 20 miles away by now, bashing against the coral on the other side, or even worse, out in open ocean.  Tim and Alex took the dinghy to go look for it, but it was a fruitless dinghy ride from hell.  The ride out was OK but coming back they were bashing into huge swells.  I got chastised for not tying the paddle board up correctly, and I chastised right back that the boards need to be brought up each night. 

Anyway, all hope wasn’t lost yet.  On our way back to the anchorage near the pass, we saw some guys with a panga (hey, I thought this atoll was uninhabited!?), so we dropped the dinghy while underway and Tim dinghied over to talk to them while the boys and I proceeded to the anchorage in Exodus.  Tim arranged to trade some gasoline for them to give him a ride to the other side of the atoll where the board might be.  A deal was struck, and Alex, Steve, and Kyle went along too and made an adventure out of it.  Although they made some new friends, they had no luck finding the paddle board.

I like to think that the board is now in the hands of some Polynesian kids who have so much fun with it that it makes it worth it that we gave it up.  We have since blown up the other inflatable, so we have two ready to use again.  And I added the item, “make sure paddle boards are up,” to my nightly checklist, and now they always come up.