It all started in 2012 when Pilgrim tours sponsored a three-day cruise to somewhere in Mexico, with a brief stop in Catalina. Once aboard our cruise ship in Long Beach, I discovered the possibility of a snorkel adventure in Catalina. I used to be a good swimmer, and a snorkel excursion in Hawaii a few years earlier was magnificent. This was the right price, so I signed up, later learning that I was the only Pilgrim who did so. Remembering Hawaii, I purchased an underwater camera on the dock
and met our snorkel adventure guide. He instructed us, a ragtag group of 10 or 12 to follow him to a warehouse half a mile down the coast. We single filed obediently after him like a bunch of mismatched ducklings.
By now, the day had turned cloudy and a cold wind kicked up along the dock where we were standing. “Okay, now. Take all your clothes off and put them in a bundle over here,” he ordered. Standing on a dock at Catalina, butt naked with a bunch of strangers, was not the problem you might think it would be, since we were all covered with blue gooseflesh anyway.
But I digress. “Okay. I’m going to give each one of you a wet suit. Hurry up and put it on!” Putting on a wet, wet suit that someone else from the preceding tourist group has just peeled off was not easy, to put it mildly. Our guide conducted an inspection: “Fine, fine, fine…” Until he came to me. Looking me up and down, he said, “Well, yours is backward and inside out, but we don’t have time to change.” I looked down: emblazoned across my front in four-inch letters was “MALE/SMALL.”
Again like well-trained ducklings, we followed him to the seawall, 4 feet above the water’s surface. “Okay, listen up,” he hollered. “Sit down on the edge. One by one, wait until a wave comes up. Slide into the water on the wave. For crying out loud, hold onto your snorkel and mask. We’re shorthanded, and I don’t have divers to go down to find them.”
Divers? The water in Hawaii was 2 feet deep. Divers?
“The water here is full of kelp. So when it grabs your arms and legs, just gently brush it away with your hands,” he directed. Would those be the same two hands I would be using to swim with, I wondered. I began to worry. We all sat down on the edge of the seawall. One by one, a wave would wash up and carry out one of our group. Finally, it was my turn. A giant wave sloshed up, washing me into the water where I promptly somersaulted, ending upside down with my mask and snorkel submerged. I panicked and began flailing with my kelp-entangled arms and legs. My comrades were having their own problems but quickly saw that they paled in comparison with mine, which was beginning to look like it might end with a burial at sea. Choking on seawater, I couldn’t get enough breath to call out. Finally, someone pointed our guide in my direction, and he paddled over to me, where he shoved me in the direction of the seawall. Between the slime, and the pressure of my “male/small” wetsuit, I couldn’t breathe or beach myself.
“I’m going to put my hand on your bottom,“ he warned. I didn’t care where he put his hand at that point. Another wave came in, depositing me in a gasping, shaking, gelatinous mass on the concrete seawall. I laid back, periodically attempting to wave cheerfully to the others as they struggled on through the kelp, trying to look as though they were having fun.
That evening, once more on the solid ship deck and breathing more normally, I encountered a Pilgrim sister traveler on her way to the evening banquet. “Somebody told me you nearly drowned this afternoon, but now you’re laughing, “she said accusingly. “That didn’t really happen, did it?” What can I say to a question like that? It is said that the definition of comedy is tragedy plus time. I did nearly drown, but I love a good story more than life itself!