My Unusual Instructor Certification Exam

For a couple years now, I have wanted to become a certified coastal sea kayak instructor. I don’t know why – frankly it’s not a rational desire on my part. I have a good job that I enjoy and a small family to support. I can’t actually teach kayaking to any extent. The best way to explain this desire is to draw an analogy to martial arts.

Judo or Karate aficionados invest huge sums of time and money to earn belts. Do the belts allow them to earn more money? No. Does a belt bring greater fame and glory?Not really. But to have a quantitative measure of mastery in your sport of choice – that’s worth a great deal.

So for me, the ACA instructor certification is like getting an advanced belt in sea kayaking. It requires skills in paddling with complex and exact sequences of moves – quite similar to the katas used in Martial arts training. The modifier “coastal” shows a hard-core level of skill with ability in the surf zone, powerful currents, and a diverse range of rescue scenarios.

To get the certification, you have to take a three-day workshop (the Instructor Development Workshop or IDW). This is followed some time later by three days of testing – the Instructor Certification Exam. The goal of the IDW is to show you exactly what you need to know to pass the ICE. You learn about proper stroke technique, how to model these strokes, and how to teach the material every coastal sea kayaker should know.

At the ICE, they go over everything covered in the IDW, but now instead of the “Instructor Trainers” (or IT’s) doing all the talking, the “Instructor candidates” (or IC’s) do all the work. In addition, they put the IC’s into awkward situations to make sure they can handle tough situations in rough water with “grace and poise”.

This story takes place during my ICE. I took my ICE with world famous kayak surfer (third in the 2000 world championships) and Tsunami Ranger Deb and her assistant IT Rebecca. Both Deb and Rebecca are high school teachers. John (another Tsunami Ranger) helped out on the second day. My fellow IC’s were:

• Jon -– An experienced Baja guide who owns his own kayak guide/instruction company in Santa Cruz
• Harmonie -– An outdoor fanatic who ski’s all winter and paddles the rest of the year. She works for California Kayak and Canoe and was going to spend the summer guiding sea kayak trips in Alaska.
• Brian -– A class V white water paddler with only a year or two of sea kayaking. He had unusually long arms and a very fluid paddling style. He works as a lab tech in San Francisco and teaches part time for California Kayak and Canoe.
• Ryan -– A full-time kayak instructor from San Louis Obispo California. He spends lots of time in the surf.

• Chris -– A part-time sea kayak instructor living in Half Moon Bay. Chris has done some serious expedition sea kayaking in South America.

On the first day of the ICE, we worked on our paddling katas. Forward strokes, reverse strokes, sweep strokes, draw strokes, and more -- each one done at a slow speed in a very precisely prescribed manner. On the second day, we headed to the South Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge for navigation and group-paddling exercises in the strong tiderips and breaking swells directly below the bridge.

The day was sunny, warm and windy. The crossing from Chrissy field to Kirby Cove was done at slack and was easy. We hung out on the beach at Kirby cove while several of my fellow instructor-candidates were tested on their teaching skills as they gave presentations on different kayaking topics. After an hour or so on the beach, we saw coast guard boats looking for something. Deb called the coast guard to find out what was going on. The coast guard explained that a woman (wearing a long skirt and with long brown hair) had abandoned her car near (or on?) the golden gate bridge. Someone had seen her walking out onto the bridge, but a moment later she wasn’t there. This typically means a jumper.

A strange mood descended upon the group. We all started scanning the water. Our imaginations turned every random object into a body. The tide turned from slack to ebb and it was clear that if she did jump, her body was heading far out to sea. It was sad and a bit strange to think about, but we went on – after all, everyone knows that people jump off the Golden Gate bridge form time to time.

We ate lunch joking about jumpers when a gray whale swam by just a stones-throw away from the shore. Gray whales don’t come into the bay very often. For a couple people in the group, this was the first time they had even seen a whale.

After lunch, we charged out into the water heading for the South Tower and its rough surfable swells. The swell was modest (around 8 or 10 feet?) as was the west wind (maybe 20 knots). These were both opposing a 3.5 knot current, though, so the swell was steep as it came under the bridge. It was an absolutely wild place to play – and play we did. You have to be pretty good to get invited to take an ICE and this group of instructor-candidates was more than good – we were excellent. After playing for an hour or so, we gathered together in the eddy at the base of the tower and agreed to play for five more minutes before calling it a day.

Chris (in his 19 foot long Seaward kayak with the lime green deck) was in close near some surfers right under the bridge. I was just west of him a short distance heading back out for more action. I was facing away from the bridge, when I heard a horrific noise. I didn’t know what it was or where it came from. It sounded as if someone had thrown a small bomb at us. I looked over to our IT (Deb) and she was yelling something at me. I couldn’t hear her and started paddling towards her – still totally confused as to what was going on. My first thought was that we were under attack and that we had to get away from there.

Meanwhile, Brian and Ryan started paddling in my direction. I finally could make out a word in Deb’s frantic yelling – the word was body! I spun my kayak around (gee I love the maneuverability of a Looksha Sport) and there it was, a body spread eagled in the water. I spun the boat around thinking it was the woman from earlier in the day. When I got closer, I saw that it wasn’t the woman but a young man wearing dark pants and no shirt. I saw a surfer in the water and thought the body was an injured surfer who needed help. I can’t stress enough how confused I was. The whole scene was surreal.

Ryan and Chris started pulling the body out of the water as I paddled to them as fast as I could. Ryan moved out of the way while Chris and Brian rafted up to support the body. I finally arrived and Chris called out for help. He was having a hard time hanging onto the body and keeping his boat upright. Remember, this was happening in s ome pretty wild water. The swells weren’t breaking at that point, but we all knew this could change at any minute.

I paddled over to Chris and stabilized his boat as they continued to get the victim out of the water. His body was more than limp. It was like his back was rubber. His eyes were open and he took a breath so I assumed he was alive. I grabbed Brian’s paddle so he could get a better grip, put my paddle and his under my deck lines. They couldn’t get the victim under control and stabilized on their decks. I positioned my boat tight up against Chris’s boat, grabbed the victim’s legs and struggled them up onto my deck. It was really hard! A sack of potatoes would have been easier to manage. I was leaning onto Chris’s deck behind his cockpit and hanging onto his boat with one arm. The other arm was holding the victim’s legs so he wouldn’t slip off the deck. It was at this point that Chris explained that he saw the guy hit the water just 10 or 20 feet in front of him. Deb had seen the whole fall. At last I understood the noise I had heard earlier. It was the sound of a belly-flop from almost 150 feet up! I estimate that he hit the water about 20 feet behind me.

So there we were – the victim was stabilized on our three boats, but we couldn’t paddle or do anything with him. Chris decided that we needed to get him to land so we could work on him. This required landing our three boats through the surf. The group worked like a hardened team of professionals. First Ryan attached a towline to Chris’s boat and started pulling us out of the roughest swells. This was a great relief since we would have been clobbered if one of the bigger swells came through.

Meanwhile, Deb was calling the coast guard to coordinate the arrival of a rescue boat. She rafted up with us and provided moral support.

Meanwhile, Jon went over to the beach to check it out. He quickly determined that the surf was dumping onto a pebble beach and there was no way we could safely get the boats and the victim onto the beach. Harmonie clipped into Ryan’s boat so we could get more control over the four-boat-raft and John clipped into Harmonie’s boat to provide even more towing power.

The team was cranking and operating at peak efficiency. We had the victim’s head out of the water in less than a minute of impact. He was up on the three boats within the first two minutes. By five minutes after impact, we had a stable four boat raft and towing underway with the final three boat tandem tow in place only a couple minutes later.

Then we waited. Chris was struggling with his decision to NOT administer CPR. He didn’t have a mask or rubber gloves and in this era of AIDS, you just can’t take chances with unprotected CPR on a stranger. Brian was upset that we had given up on the young man, but I quickly pointed out that it clearly didn’t matter. Even if we brought his vital signs back, he was so messed up from the fall that he wasn’t going to make it.

Time really drags when your bouncing in the swells, hanging onto what was obviously a very dead body (his last breath was the one I saw as we first pulled him onto our boats). The coast guard was there within 15 minutes of our first call – which is pretty impressive. But still, if felt like forever. I grabbed a grappling hook they stretched out to us and pulled the raft up against the coast guard boat. As I held the raft up against the boat, they pulled the body onto my kayak.

This was the first time I got a long look at the young man’s face. He was in his late teens or early 20’s. He was a good sized man of medium build with a slightly Hispanic look to him. His eyes were closed which is good since Chris later said they had a strange cloudy look in them due to the trauma of the impact. His body was limp – as if his spinal column was made of rubber. His face was limp as well – as if he were in a very deep sleep. His shoulders were floppy and dislocated. His skin, however, was normal colored.

The coast guard then pulled him off my boat and placed him on a stretcher. They asked us to contact them when we got to shore and thanked us for our help. Off they sped with the dead man leaving us to raft up and come to grips with what had just happened. Several members of the group held each other in a group hug. I was emotionally numb and hung out at the edge of the group. In my mind replayed the movie of that body sliding onto my kayak and then onto the coast guard boat. I couldn’t stop thinking about the awful phone call some Mom and Dad were going to get that evening.

We all agreed that we needed to get to shore and sit and think for a while.

Looking back on the experience, I feel a number of emotions. I am angry with the young man. He had to know we were down there before he jumped. He landed right between Chris and me and could have easily hit us. I am proud of being part of such a capable, professional team of kayakers. We were a great team and did everything right under difficult conditions. At the same time, I am saddened by the whole affair. This was a man with so much life ahead of him; and he threw it away. And finally, I feel a strange connection to the golden gate bridge – especially the area around the south tower.