Our Second Brush With Death In Hawaii

For our return, we decided to go along the shore of the bay instead of crossing in deep ocean.

As it turned out it was not a good choice.

Rocks can suddenly fall and tumble into the water from the cliff.

As we witnessed from the ocean floor beneath us.

We could see the bottom, where all size boulders had taken a plunge.

No pretty coral here.

But we did see a big eel!

I had a bit of an uneasy feeling...

Then we made another dumb decision, we decided to take a break about half way across.

Here

The rocks were a little slippery, but not sharp, thank goodness!

It was definitely not a stable situation.

Mike took his mask completely off and held it in his hand. 

Unfortunately a couple of slightly bigger waves sent both his mask and myself back in the water!

And that is how Mike lost his mask and snorkel!

No way of getting it back!

We left the danger zone right away and decided to go towards the deeper waters.

As I said Mike, is not a swimmer and without a mask he probably would have not made it across, or he would have drunk too much water.

So I gave him mine, because I could manage without it better than Mike could. 

But it is made for women., and it took quite some time to adjust it. 

We would stop every few minutes, at least for 10mn!

He says it wasn't pleasant...

Boy was I having a few regrets! 

What was I thinking taking Mike on this challenging swim?

What if something happens? 

What if... The... Worst happens?

I don't even have a phone to call 911! 

(Which I could have brought with us in it's waterproof case!)

If I screamed would anyone hear me, people were so far away!

We basically did a triathlon swim with no training whatsoever!

What was I thinking?

He finally got it sealed and we were back in business. 

During this swim, Mike also finally got the hang of kicking his legs in a way 

that actually propels him!

His normal kick was more like a bicycle sort of kick, not efficient at all.

Yeah! 

I've been trying to teach him that for the past 20 years!

Having to save your own skin maybe does tend to make us find strength 

and smarts we couldn't be bothered to use before. 

The rest of the swim was not that easy for me, without at least a mask, or goggles, but I managed...

Having Mike be stronger and faster helped a lot! 

I was no longer pulling him.

He actually held me while I was on my back a few times and we both worked together

As I could feel the strength of his kick propelling us.

It took us about 45mn I think to get back to the dock from there.

We had left that morning at 8:30am and returned to shore around 1pm.

We were soooo happy we made it!

We dehydrated, ate, showered and slept and did nothing for 3-4hours!

*******

Part of me was pleased and happy to have accomplished such a swim in open waters!

I've always wondered if I could do something like this.

Kinda like a bucket list thing!

And I must admit, another part of me wasn't proud for putting 
my hubby at risk like that!

But I was very very very grateful nothing of grave consequence happened!

I could have lost him!
Our kids could have lost their daddy!