I Was Lost At Sea....(Kind of)

I'm not joking.  Now, I know some of my friends have been waiting for this story to finally pop up on this blog, have a URL of its own, and to hit the internet.  Well, the day has arrived.  The following is a true story, maybe some minor embellishments, but wholly true nonetheless.

In June of 2014, my friend, we'll call her Reba, and I, flew down to the Florida Keys to visit my Dad who lives on Summerland Key, just above Key West.  I have a handful of family that lives in the Florida Keys, and I love going to visit them!  Bringing friends is added element of fun to getting to hang with my family, and of course participate in water sports.

We woke up on Saturday morning, put on swimsuits, cover ups, and hopped into the car to head down to Key West for lunch and to see my cousins (who are more like brothers to me).  We have a sandwich, a pina colada, and decide to stroll down Duval Street looking at the shops.  We visit my cousin Zak at the La Concha where he worked, then decided to get in on the watercraft fun by renting some jet skis down the street.  Reba recommended going for 30 minutes, but I immediately interrupted in this #YOLO moment by insisting on the full fledged 60 minutes per person.  Kindly, Reba was up for an hour of wielding "fun" on the open waterways of the Atlantic.  We slathered down in sunscreen, ditched our shoes and cover ups, put on a life jacket, and climbed aboard our sturdy jet skis.  My Dad decided to sit tight on land, though he is a major water sports enthusiast himself (a water skier, fisherman, surfer, snorkeler, boater, kayaker, he's got it covered!), he couldn't be convinced to join us this time.  A nice guide named Luke from England gave us some pointers on how to operate the jet skis, we circled the inlet and away we went.  Luke led us out to an open area beyond the intercoastal where there was open ocean.  Open water.  (Yea, you remember that movie right?  Don't ever see it, trust me.)

So, we jet around.  Reba was fearless.  Racing around up to 60+ mph, doing tight spins and turns.  I was gaining my bearings, a self-proclaimed adrenaline junky, I was revving up and plowing into wakes and waves.  We raced over to one area where the water was greener.  We stopped, basked in the sun for a few minutes chatting and looking at the sea life underneath our jet skis.  Then we decided we wanted to see more, and we darted over to where this island was located carried by the thought we could see more fish in shallow water.  There was a small inlet on one end of the island, we cruised the jet skis on through at a slow pace of 2 mph looking for fish.  I saw a fish or two.  Reba was cruising around, and I noticed the water was getting rather shallow.  I could only see brownish water to my right (I was facing the island at this point), and then the water was dark for as far as you could see out to the open ocean and past the channel.  My jet ski started beeping and smoking, it was overheated.  Then within seconds, Reba's did the same.  Gah!!!  Sea grass everywhere.  We floated past the island ever so incredibly slowly.  Reba was about 50 feet to my right at this point, both of us floating at the same pace.  I was about 40 feet or so from the island, which stayed in front of me.  It was WAY to shallow to fire up the jet skis and get out of there.

To this day, and I swear, and everyone gives me a hard time for this, I swear, I heard a Florida panther or something in that small island.  (I quickly recalled a story where my Dad had told me those things swim from island to island in the keys....or maybe that was deer, either way, I was convinced I heard it growling in there!)  So at this point, I start to panic.  There was no way I was getting out of there, and NO chance the sea grass would end.  I was convinced that if we could only get to deeper water, we could get the jet skis started again.  I confessed to Reba that I was......strongly concerned.  Ok, I was totally freaked out.  (I'm laughing at this now as I write it!)   I managed to float over to her, and we kept our jet skis together.  What does she do?   She snaps off her life jacket, tosses it on to the front of the jet ski and says, "well, I'm sure someone will be a long soon to rescue us.  I might as well not get any tan lines while we're out here!"  I kid you not!  Sunshine bathing beauty was calm as ever, meanwhile, I'm hyperventilating and near throwing up!  Both of us had no cell phone, the lady at the dock convinced me that they'd get wet and that we should leave them behind.  Terrible advice.  We had no food, no water, we were TOTALLY stuck.  And we were only TEN minutes into our jet ski rental.  You got it, at this point, I'm kicking myself for insisting on renting these dumb things for AN ENTIRE HOUR!!!  What on earth was I thinking?  There we sit.  Jet skis totally overheated, low tide rapidly approaching, in the shark infested waters of the Florida Keys, just waiting for rescue.

Time creeped on, seemed like eternity.  I was supposed to go to dinner that night with my cousins, my Dad and his wife Nancy.  Knowing my Dad was an experienced waterman, I was certain he'd find us before dark.  It was about 3:10 in the afternoon at this point.  No one knew where we were, how would they find us?  Growing up in Florida, I had heard so many times about people who got stranded and waved for help, never getting help because so many people come and go through the channels.  Were we going to just float out to sea?   Did we need to start swimming toward shore?  But there are loads of bull sharks, hammerhead sharks, and barracudas in these waters.  LOADS.  I'm a goner.  I tried flagging down boats strolling by, no luck.  I saw a boat out in the channel, I thought if we could float over to them, we could make it.  Then, the situation got worse.  Low tide struck, we hit the bottom and we stopped moving.  No more floating.  We weren't going anywhere.  The jet skis caught the low tide, and all the sea grass and sponge was super shallow.  We were completely out of control of the situation.  Reba was entirely calm through this entire ordeal so far, purely confident we'd be found.  I was not so confident.  I mean, I couldn't even Google "how to fix overheated jet ski" without an iPhone!  We were doomed.

I needed to pull it together.  Ok, I gave myself a pep talk.  I was going to get off the jet ski.  We were never going to make it to that boat in the distance if we weren't floating and at this point, it was 4:00 pm, our rental was over technically.  So I get down off the jet ski, I could care less about sharks at this point (though dusk is their feeding time), and I decided to drag this massive Yamaha over the sea grass and sand bar over to the deeper water channel.  Reba pleaded with me not to do it, said she'd stay there while I go get help.  I wasn't going to leave her out there!  So this turned into me being calm, and her having a meltdown.  So, minor detail, I had had major surgery about two weeks before this event.  I had about 40 sutures in my chest wall and all other sorts of trauma, I actually wasn't even supposed to be jet skiing.  BUT....water adventures got the best of my temptation.  So there I was, dragging this Yamaha jet ski across the ocean floor and then I decided to drag my friend on hers too.  Reba couldn't bring herself to get off her jet ski in fear of sharks, so I pleaded with her.  I actually said, "I AM BEGGING YOU!"  (which we find hilarious to this day!)  So that did it.  She got off her jet ski, into water that was crawling with sharks at feeding time.  It was nearing 4:30 pm.  Almost 90 minutes that we'd been lost at sea.  So as we're dragging our jet skis over to the channel (they still weren't starting up), I see a guy on a jet ski coming toward us.  I hop on the jet ski and start jumping up and down, waving my arms while yelling.  "HEY!!  OVER HERE!!"  The guy saw us and sped past us.  My heart sank.  He came back around staying in the channel.  He SAW US!!!  We were going home!!!!!!!!!!!  We were rescued!!!  We weren't going to be a sequel to Castaway afterall!!!

The guy was slightly unenthused, evidently this type of thing happens a lot.  He said, "ok ma'am, you need to reach under your jet ski and take out the sea grass."  I did that, hopped on, and it started just fine!  Reba's did the same.  As soon as we were started up, I looked at her, burst out laughing and gave her two thumbs up and said, "Mai Tais are on me!"  She laughed and said, "Bonded for life!"  We survived.  We were lost at sea, for 90 minutes.  While she was thinking of scenes from Unbroken, I was thinking of scenes from Open Water.  Two drastically different outcomes.  Ironically, almost the same exact thing happened to us the next day out at Sawyer Key on my Dad's boat.  It wouldn't start, engine failed.  His cell phone died, his radio died, and all we had were my two cell phones.  We called Tow Boat USA and made it out of there, alive, at dusk.

So, moral of the story is, just trust the Lord.  Half the time we worry about things that don't happen, we think the worst.  We catastrophize outcomes in our minds.  We freak out, panic, get anxious, but the Lord is sovereign.  Often times, we find ourselves in situations - like stranded on a jet ski in the middle of the ocean in shark infested waters - where He is literally all we have, and we find that He is all we need.  I'm still really glad He sent the rescue guy, and Tow Boat USA though!

This Thursday I have a oncological check up and a blood draw.  My four month check up, and I anticipate it will go smoothly.  Of course, prayers are always appreciated, and I'm thankful for each and every one.