My Accident story

A Boating Good Time

February 2019

Pippa

I am learning to entertain my audience through a recount

Like most good accident stories they always start out boring. We were up at the bach, deep in the heart of Whitianga on a very normal afternoon. My sister Jess and I were entertaining our cousins as we explored the creek at the end of the beach. Now to get to the creek we simply jump in kayaks and paddle

down to the creek (cause nobody likes walking to the creek).

We took the kayaks out but there was not enough for everyone. So my big cousin Eddie and I took the rowboat down. When we got there we played in the water. Once we were done fooling around our cousins asked us if we could take there towel back to the house in the rowboat. They were very lazy indeed. So Eddie and I said, “Yes.”

On the way back I asked Eddie if it was possible to surf a wave in a small boat. I thought he would would be the one to know, you see he was a Lifeguard and did surf life saving. But apparently he didn’t know as they don’t do this. At this point I suggested that we could try, we rowed out to where the waves were starting to come in, we got as close as we could to the next wave. We paddled and paddled, then the wave came up behind us we. This was the moment to see if my bright idea would worked.

The wave caught up to us, and started to splash at our back, water poured into the boat. It became a race against time, we shuffled forward so that the water would not make the boat sink as it filled from behind. But we shuffled too much the boat nose dive from all our weight. The nose going under flipped the boat, we were now trapped under the boat. Stuck between the sand and the boat, we were too shallow to swim under. We were trapped.

Holding my breath for what seemed like forever but I’m sure was only a few seconds, we managed to have breathing space once the wave had settled. Turning to Eddie I said, “What if another wave comes Eddie, we will drown?” Eddie looked at me with confidence, “Nope Pippa, we aren’t going to die here today.” With all his strength he pushed from his knees forcing the boat up and off us. Freeing us from the trapped boat.

That was the day that my older cousin Eddie save me, I guess all that life saving did pay off. Eddie was confident in the face of danger. This story lives on when our family comes together, Eddie also has the nickname Aquaman now. And by the way all the towels we were carrying got all wet and floated on the ocean.