Every year I go on a live-aboard SCUBA dive trip to the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara with my brother, and for the last few years I have brought a kayak. This trip I brought my Pirouette river kayak because I wanted to try a “seal launch” out the gate of the dive boat. Seal launching means slipping or falling off a rock into the water, and either staying upright or rolling back up again. I have seen video of the Tsunami Rangers launching off rocks and heard river kayakers bragging about launching off incredibly high cliffs into the water. The Vision dive boat has two gates on its sides that are four or five feet above the water. When the dive boat is safely anchored and it is OK to jump off in your SCUBA gear, they open the gates.
Having jumped out the gates in SCUBA, I should not have been anxious about falling out in a kayak. Actually, my worst fear was that the kayak would fall nose first, spear the water, bounce back up and damage the hull of the dive boat with its tail! Eventually I built up my courage and put on all my kayaking gear. As I scooted towards the gate in the kayak, everyone on the boat came over to watch, laugh and place bets on what was going to happen to me. I twisted my hips as I went over and managed to rotate the kayak a little so I couldn’t bounce back into the dive boat. The nose of the kayak dove into the water, slowed down, and then the kayak kind of just rotated back upright. To keep it from spinning around and landing me upside down I braced with my paddle and stayed upright. No problem!
I did this several more times during the three day dive trip. There is a third gate on this dive boat, the front gate that is eight to ten feet above the water. I never built up my courage to try to seal launch out of that gate. Yet! But I’m considering it and will give it a try next year.
One of the SCUBA dives on this trip was especially memorable. That was the dive when I bit the mouthpiece off my regulator during a shark attack. Well, that is the way my brother Paul described it, the whole truth was a little less exciting.
Earlier in the trip I had watched Paul and a few other divers holding a horned shark for John Valez to photograph. Although horned sharks can get over four feet long, the ones we typically saw were only a foot long or so. These sharks have evolved to be scavenging bottom feeders and actually look a lot like catfish. They are mostly harmless, but do have a spike on their tail that looks suspiciously like the one on a sting ray. After watching other divers holding one, I was emboldened to grab one myself when Paul and I were diving together. I chased the shark around for a few seconds, then managed to grab it and hold onto it for a minute while it thrashed around. This is the “shark attack” although as you see the whole truth is that it was ME attacking the SHARK in this case. After I let the poor animal go and we were continuing our dive, my regulator started hanging out of my mouth at an angle. The part of the mouthpiece that you grip with your teeth was falling off! Parts of the mouthpiece flopped up and tickled the inside of my mouth, making my gag reflex go off. I had to use the backup regulator on my fill-tube, which is uncomfortable. So then I tore the loose parts off my main regulator and held the mouthpiece on with one hand. Paul claimed afterwards that I bit it off in the excitement of the shark attack, but I think it was simply old and worn out. I had a spare mouthpiece in my save-a-dive-kit and was able to replace it in a few minutes back on the boat.