Marty's Version of the Black Point Beach Disaster February 12 1995.

On Saturday the 18th we were up north and I told Mike that I would drive up to Black Point to pick him up. We arranged that I would leave home 3 hours after him, and that should get me to Black Point about the same time he would arrive.

I got to Black Point at a couple of minutes after 1, almost right on time. There's about a half mile walk from the parking lot to the top of the cliff, then a very impressive stair facility to get down to the beach. Since I didn't think I'd have to wait, I decided not to carry any books or anything along with me. When I got to the beach, I was dismayed by the look of the place, a shallow arc of beach with high cliffs and huge waves breaking across the entire opening with quite a few rocks in the water just off-shore. Mike wasn't there and I stood on the top of the stairway for a while, just looking at the geometry. I decided that it was silly to stand around and worry, so I went down the stairs and tried to interest myself in the birds on the beach. There was a flock of small shore birds - they're always fun to watch, but I kept staring at the point, hoping to see a kayak come around it. There were a couple of small diving ducks and I watched them for a while. I walked up to the end of the beach and as I started back I saw that one of the ducks was on the beach, and I almost forgot to worry about Mike while I watched him drinking fresh water that was crossing the shingle in a small stream from a small fall down the cliff. It would occasionally run away from the stream and pick something up and eat it, then waddle back to the stream. Birds that are designed to spend most of their time on water tend to have their legs very far back on their bodies, and this bird was no exception. The way that it looked as it ran towards its prey was pretty amusing. Pretty soon it went back to the water and I went back up the stairs. I watched the point, wishing for Mike to appear, trying to convince myself that it was silly to stand and watch and that I should walk back to the car and get a book, but I couldn't leave the area. I walked up and down the cliff a little bit, trying to find a vantage that would let me see beyond the point, to no avail. Someone came by and I asked the time. It was nearly 2, Mike was almost an hour late. I decided that I was going to drive back to Stump Beach to see if he had decided against the attempt and gone back, pretty soon. It was only a fairly short drive, and I thought that I wouldn't really be gone that long... and I would be doing something besides standing and watching... All this time I was wondering how long I should wait before I went looking for a phone to call for help and should I call someone to come and look from every available site for him between Stump Beach and Black Point, or should I call the Coast Guard to come and look for him from air and water. I thought about calling his mother to tell her that Mike was missing... I'm a champion worrier and have no problem thinking up really awful scenarios.

A little after 2 he finally appeared. For a little while I stopped worrying. I'd gotten so worried about not seeing him, that I'd forgotten to worry about the fact that he had to try to get ashore in this very unfriendly place. I have heard that big waves come in threes, but in this place they were coming in 8's and 10's, I'd counted a couple of "nests" of them before I'd gotten too involved in worrying about his not being there. I stood on the lowest deck of the stairway, staring into the water, trying to see a good place with no submerged rocks for him to come ashore. While I was looking into the water I saw one of the diving ducks working an area very near sure, and from my vantage point I could see it swimming under water. Pretty, and briefly distracting. I picked a good place and went to stand on the beach at the place where I thought that Mike should try to land.

Standing on the beach watching, Mike disappeared behind every medium to large wave that came in. It took me a while to figure out what he was doing, he was getting back into his wetsuit jacket. I thought that that was a good thing. He'd been warm while paddling, but he could see that this wasn't going to be an easy landing, so he was putting on all of that insulation and padding before heading in. I saw a flash of green as he put his life-jacket back on. Good, Mike, tie it on tight! Then it seemed to me that he sat tight and watched one of the brief sections of small waves go by. Apparently he saw that he had been pushed in a bit, and that there were big waves coming, because he decided to paddle out farther to wait a little longer and watch. I say apparently because I thought that he had started to paddle towards shore... remember I only see him off and on between waves and he was pretty far away. Anyway, while he was paddling a BIG wave came and washed him off of the kayak. The kayak shot north and towards shore. I thought that Mike was trying to swim after the kayak and I wanted to tell him not to worry about the stuff, just to come ashore as quickly as he could. Sure enough that wave was the first of many big ones, breaking over him one after another.

For a while I could see Mike, the kayak and the paddle separately in the surf, but I lost track of the paddle. I was walking north, at a fairly rapid pace, for me, to keep up with Mike's northward movement. He was also heading in. The kayak was upside down most of the time, and not moving very fast, but every once in a while it would flip rightside up again and shoot towards the beach. I still thought that Mike was worrying about the kayak, so when it got close, I walked back toward the cliff and pulled off my shoes and socks so that I could retrieve it. Mike made vague gestures that I didn't understand as I headed back towards the surf. (It turns out that he thought that I was coming in after him.) The kayak had landed upside down on one of the rocks and I stood, watching Mike and waiting for another big wave to come along to push it off of the rock. I didn't have to wait very long, and I waded into the cold water and grabbed it and pulled it up the beach (which is to say that I got my feet cold, I don't want you to imagine that I was risking my life over that piece of plastic!) Then I went back to my post, standing just beyond the reach of the waves, watching Mike, wishing he would get out of the water. Wishing that there were something I could DO. The inactivity on my part was painful - Mike was out there in the water, being exhausted by the pounding that he was taking and all that I could do was stand and watch. I wanted to go in after him - but it made no sense for me to go in with no protection when he was out there in a nice warm, buoyant wet suit, with a life preserver. And he was making slow, but steady progress towards shore. I probably would have stopped being logical if he had been pulled out to sea, or if he seemed to be losing consciousness. When he finally got his feet firmly on the ground I headed towards him, saw a baggy in the sand with a very white piece of paper in it - the white attracted my attention - I looked back at him until it clicked in my head that there was a watch in the bag, so I picked it up. I went and took Mike's arm and helped him ashore, beyond the wave line and he collapsed onto hands and knees, retched once and then collapsed the rest of the way - ending up on his back on the beach. He motioned at the zipper on his life preserver and I unzipped it, and his wet suit jacket so that he could breath easier. When I unzipped his life preserver I found his hat stuffed in there.. his stupid, precious hat! When he caught his breath enough to talk he asked if I'd gotten his paddle. More with the stupid THINGS! But I stood up and looked for a paddle - I thought I saw something that looked slim and rigid tossing in the surf near the beach a bit further north, so I went to investigate. It was some kelp... and just as I was telling him that that wasn't it, I saw it on the beach to the south. I walked down and moved it up above the wave line and went back to Mike, again.

So there we were, on the beach. Mike and all of his stuff had made it safely ashore... as soon as he caught his breath he started pulling the kayak down the beach toward the stairway - he went into the surf to wash off the sand and I found a rock by the stream where the duck had gotten its drink to wash off my feet and put my shoes and socks back on.