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"Boys," I sighed to Dave. "Only boys would set out in the dark like that." Just after we landed, the wind started picking up—and up, and up. It was coming off the land, driving the hot, dry air of the desert toward the cooling water and out to sea. Soon we were staking out the tent’s guy lines and huddling together in our windbreakers as we cooked dinner. "I hope they’re OK," Dave said as we ate. "I hope they stick together," I added. "I wonder if they made it to town yet with this wind. They've got to be going nowhere fast if they're paddling against it. Maybe they'll turn around and come back here," Dave said. "Do you think they have headlamps or wetsuits?" I asked. The Missing Paddler The next morning, I was clamming in the area that the boys had told us about, scooping them up by handfuls, when a boat pulled up. Miguel, who owns the campground where the boys were staying and had rented them kayaks, was out looking for one of the boys. Only four of the five had made it across the bay the previous night. Miguel had received a call that morning from a friend who had recognized one of the rental kayaks sitting on shore on the other side of the bay."Really? Oh no," Miguel had said, then headed out in his panga, a local style of motorboat, to see what was going on. He followed the shore of the bay, and soon spotted a paddle, a kayak and the paddler who had left them on the beach. The young man was one of the five paddlers. He had just started walking back toward camp when Miguel pulled his panga along shore and asked if he was OK. He said he had just reached shore and was exhausted after spending a grueling night on the water. "Where's everyone else?" asked Miguel. "I don't know," the young man replied. "We got split up." Miguel continued along the beach and found two of the other kayakers walking down the shore toward camp and another one walking along a different spot on the beach. One kayaker was still missing. The four young men on the beach had not yet caught up with each other and didn't realize that one of them hadn't made it ashore yet. T here was no sign of the fifth kayak on the beach. Miguel scanned the bay with his binoculars and saw a red kayak floating in the middle of the bay, but no one was with it. He was hoping that the fifth paddler had reached shore and had left the kayak where the rising tide could have floated the boat and carried it out from shore. If that was the case, he might find the missing boy walking down the beach like the others. The four kayakers who had reached shore were utterly exhausted, and were not only too tired but too inexperienced to take part in the search. They stayed at the campground, answered questions from the authorities and called the missing boy's mother. |
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