in the nebulous
Published September 12, 2007 | 
Of course it was on this exact rock shelf where I bent the pins on my 3 piece kayak. What you can’t tell from the image is that the shelf of volcanic stone traveled all the way up the coast. Each wave would again bury it for just a moment or slam directly into it. From the water, there was no stone, only sand.
This morning I woke up thinking about the “nebulous”. Metaphorically anyway. That place between us and our understanding of others. The rocks below the surface. It reminds me that one cannot just rush into relationships. Personal, working, paddling, whatever. Sometimes if you can, it’s best to hold back and study. Other times life, will pick you up and toss you before you have time to truly examine what you’re getting into. Of course sometimes you find yourself sitting on the rocks trying to figure out how to fix the damage. It’s life.
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5 Responses to in the nebulous
A nasty little surprise for sure and almost impossible to get away from once you’ve committed to a landing. I’d say you were fortunate to have sustained so little damage!
Hello Derrick, I am not long back from Mull, it’s almost 100% volcanic rock. It was not just our boats that suffered, sprained ankles, cut hands etc.
Was it the stainless folding buckles that bent? How did they hold up afterwards?
Hi Derrick! salute again from Puerto Rico!
My team and I were talking about that rocks before you guys came here and circumnavigate this island, that’s why I told you once, you better check out first, but certainly you did a great job and for sure is better to hold back and study first..I hope you can fix the scratches of rockpool.
In other note, Cedeño did’nt call yet.
Yikes Douglas! I know that feeling. I had a couple nice scratches too!
Well, I jumped out of my boat on the move and just held onto the cockpit as the wave took me and the boat up on top of the rock. So at least my full weight was not in there! What it did was to bend 2 of those screws with the hooks inside the clip. Luckily the boat had two top and two bottom clasps So I basically moved a couple screws around. So in the end I had just one working clip on the top in front and back. Mike had told me that I really only needed on clip, so that gave me the idea. It worked fine. But in the future I’d take extra screws.
Hey Yvonne! Yeah, sometimes you just can’t find out the exact environment until you are “on top of it” as in this case. One thing is sure, I’ll never get the scratches out!
Strong metaphor. Life sometimes does end up on the rocks. If one survives, however, valuable lessons are learned, scratches do heal and a smarter paddler/person evolves from the ruins.