A few years ago, the summer of before my sophomore year to be exact, my mother, my sister, and I rented a little cottage in Maine for a week. The cottage was quite small; only two bedrooms, a cramped kitchen, and a sitting room, but it was located just up the street from a beautiful beach and it was only a few miles away from the center of town. Granted, the town really only consisted of an ice cream shop and a fish market, but it was still a week that we always looked forward to. This was to be our third summer at the cottage.
There was a little shed right outside the house and in that shed was a tiny blow up raft that my sister and I had discovered our first summer there. It was only big enough for two; it was made of a yellow plastic material and designed for lounging on pools or small ponds. But it also came with two short oars. Since finding it we had made a tradition of taking it out on the ocean and paddling around on it for hours on end, but never wandering too far from shore due to the raft’s small size. But that was all about to change this particular summer.
One morning my sister and I woke up like usual, donned our bikinis, packed some snacks, water, and SPF 100 sun block into a bag so as not to get burned to a crisp, and carried the raft to the beach which was only about a ten minute walk from the cottage. That morning, for some reason, my mom had stayed home so it was just us gingers. We lay on the beach for a few hours soaking up the sun and hardly talking. After a while the afternoon sun began to beat down on us and the sand grew uncomfortably hot so we sat up and stared out into the vast ocean, noticing a couple of fishermen out on their boats. My sister raised her hand to her eyes and squinted.
“Hey, Julsey?” she asked.
“Yeah?” I turned to her with curiosity; she had that voice she got when she was planning some new adventure.
“I’ve never noticed that island out there…have you?”
I followed her gaze. There was in fact an island in the distance. I shook my head, “No, not really.”
She paused. “Do you think we could row to it, you know, in the raft?”
I stared at the mysterious island with intensified curiosity. Now THERE’S an idea! I thought. It looked pretty far away, but maybe it was closer than it looked.
“Yeah! Let’s do it!”
So, we put our few belongings into the raft and pushed off from shore. There were a couple of other people on the sand, but no one really took notice of us. If they had they must’ve thought we were nuts; the Maine water was freezing for two little redheads! But my sister, Hilary, and I are adventurous, especially when we are together; the two of us are notorious for causing mischief. So for us this was going to be another ‘walk in the park’. Well, it should have been…
We rowed for what seemed like forever, paddling hard against the water. Halfway to the island we realized it was much further than we had originally thought; it was almost a mile from shore. By this point the ocean water had gotten extremely deep and choppy. I looked down into the dark water and saw no bottom. Suddenly the reality of it all sunk in and I was scared. Staring into the deep abyss, my mind went back to the previous summer when Hilary and I were in the raft.
The year before we had been lounging in the raft not too far from shore, just soaking up the summer sun and talking. Bored of just sitting in it, I decided to take a quick dip in the water. But when I dived in I had no idea how cold the water would be. It washed over me like an ice storm and immediately took the breath out of my lungs. Under the water I thought I was going to die from the cold, so I quickly emerged and started swimming back to the raft where my sister still sat. When I was only a few feet away from her, however, she screamed and pointed behind me. Her pale, terrified expression stopped me dead in my tracks and I froze.
“What?!” I screamed.
“SH-SHARK!” she yelled and kept pointing behind me. She looked genuinely scared and of course I had believed her. I started flailing around in the water and soon found myself starting to drown; the petrifying fear had taken away my ability to swim and the salty water was beginning to get into my lungs. Once my sister noticed that I was drowning she stopped laughing at her cruel joke and started yelling at me to swim to her.
“Julsey, it’s okay. I was kidding! Just swim to me, it’s okay!”
I had done my best to swim while she paddled towards me. Soon she had me in her arms and pulled me back into the raft where I lay petrified and frozen. That day left a vague scar in the back of my mind, a fear of sharks and of drowning that has never fully disappeared even to this day.
Now as we were out in open water I remembered that incident the summer before and the fear that had once gripped me returned full force. We were still about a half a mile from the island and my arms were starting to hurt from all the paddling.
“Hil, maybe we should go back…my arms are tired and we’re only halfway there.”
“Yeah, I’m tired too. We can do this another day.”
So we reluctantly turned our little raft around and started paddling back. We had no idea how strong the wind was though, and we soon found ourselves stuck in this sort of paddling limbo where no matter how hard we rowed we still made no progress. We rowed for ten minutes straight and gained no distance. Hilary and I had almost admitted defeat when a fisher boat passed by with two men on board. They hailed us and we waved back politely. Then, the older man, whom we assumed was the dad of the younger boy, yelled at us: “We thought our boat was small, but then we saw yours!”
They laughed and we laughed in return, although frankly we weren’t in the mood to be made fun of while we were struggling to get back to land. We must’ve looked pretty lame in our little blow up raft out in the open sea surrounded by all these real boats. We thought they would offer us help, but they continued on their merry way and left us seemingly without a second thought. My sister had then taken charge of our small vessel, barking orders to paddle harder or faster, and her huge pride had not allowed her to ask for help, especially from the two men who had dissed our raft. So we just kept on rowing.
After a few minutes the boat came by again, closer this time, and the older man asked if we needed any assistance. Now that they were closer we could finally see their faces. The older man was probably in his sixties, with a grey beard and sparkling eyes. However, the younger man was more like eighteen years old and quite cute. My sister and I gave each other a sly smile and we both answered: “YES PLEASE!”
They tied the front of our raft to the back of their boat with a rope and we enjoyed a few minutes of bouncing high in the air over wakes while they zoomed around on the water. At fifteen I was extremely shy, so my sister did most of the talking, explaining to our heroes the disastrous adventure we had had so far and how grateful we were to them for helping us. The older man was in fact the boy’s father and it turned out that fishing was their legitimate job. They took us closer to shore, about fifty yards, untied us and with a wave we continued our rowing, glad that we were much closer.
The fisher boat turned around and headed back out to open sea. My sister and I watched them while we rowed, our spirits raised by the kindness they had shown and our smiles big from talking with the cute boy. We had only been paddling for a moment, however, when something completely unexpected happened; the bottom of our blow up raft fell off and we plunged into the cold ocean. By now the fishermen were a good distance away from us and our boat was deflating fast.
What are we going to do? What if we drown?! I started to panic and screamed. But my sister grabbed me and brought me back to reality.
“I’m scared too but we can’t freak out. Let’s call for help and hope the fishermen or someone on shore hears us.”
So we began screaming, “Help! Help!” Surely someone had heard us and would come to our rescue. But no one came. So we yelled louder, “HELP! HELP!” Finally, our prayer was answered and the fishermen turned their boat around and were by our side within a few minutes.
“I told you they wanted your number!” The father said to his son. They both laughed, but we were not amused. We looked so pathetic with our now deflated raft and desperate eyes. They pulled us onto their boat and took us even closer to shore where we said ‘thank you’ and dove off. We swam the ten yards to shore, my sister holding the deflated pile of plastic all the way and I holding our meager supplies.
Finally, we were able to make it to land. The waves threw us onto the rocks and I sported a long gash up the length of my side because of it. We had unfortunately ruined a raft that belonged to the family who owned the cottage and that was more upsetting to our mom than us almost drowning.
That was coincidentally our last summer at the Maine cottage, but it was definitely the most memorable. Now that my sister is twenty-three and has her own life now, I don’t get to spend a lot of time with her. But when we do get together we still always seem to get ourselves into some new mischief.