🏖️ A Baywatch-style beach rescue! (This thing weighs a ton)

Hello Restless Wonders,

I don’t want to waste a second this week before dropping you onto a beach in the south of Thailand, so… in you go….! Imagine yourself floating down from the sky via parachute… Mind your feet on the tops of those palm trees as you land, won’t you? 🌴

Read or listen to the tale as you fancy, and catch you next time,

✌🏻 Anna xx

It’s 10am on a Thursday and I’m running along Klong Nin beach; bare feet padding over soft golden sand, sandwiched between a dotted string of bars, restaurants and hotels on one side, and the blue-grey sea on the other.

Up ahead there’s a rocky headland, overflowing with palm trees. Klong Nin is a thirty-minute drive from our home on Koh Lanta, but it’s worth every turn of the wheel. Especially in the morning when the narrow stretch of sand is all but deserted. Klong Nin, is a family fave.

Jamie is way up the beach at ‘Basecamp’ — keeping an eye on the kids, who are deeply immersed in a den building session. We come and do this every couple of weeks, and it’s always an easy morning of parenting. Except this morning my mind wouldn’t pipe down.

It’d just hit me that the rest of our family friends are leaving the island soon, and that it’s only going to get hotter for the six weeks we’ve got left here. I’m wondering how we’ll cope with both those things changing at once. When my brain’s in overdrive like that, exercise is usually (always) the answer — so I’ve taken the kids being entertained as my chance to escape on a run.

Sweat beads on my brow and drops from the end of my nose onto my chest. It’s already hot, the temperature pushing 30°C, and my breathing is ragged. The air is heavy, but my mind feels light. Far lighter than when I left the group, forty minutes ago.

I let out a long breath and look ahead, drinking in the palm tree-framed view. The feeling of this place. The serenity of it, and thinking what a lucky duck I am to be here, running along the shoreline of the sparkly sea.

And then… huh? Something looks out of place in the water. There’s a head — it’s making jerky movements just above the surface, inching toward the shore. Stranger still, the head seems to be holding a… is that a? Yes. It’s a fishing rod.

My eyes dart to the right, and I see our friend Rob wading out from the shore. He’s shouting toward the bobbing head — checking it’s OK. I squint through the glare on the water’s surface. The swimming-head is Rob’s son, Max.

Close to Max, I spot an upturned green sea kayak, its hull still visible above the waves but disappearing fast. I look back and forth between the two swimmers as if watching a game of tennis. Rob is still a way from the kayak and Max is still a way offshore. I’m not entirely sure what is going on, but a) it looks refreshing to be in that water and b) this smells like some kind of rescue mission. I want in!

Slipping off my bumbag and visor, I leave them in a pile on the sand and gallop toward the sea. As the water reaches my knees, I leap over it to keep up momentum and the leaping reminds me of something… something from my childhood… I sing the Baywatch theme tune at the top of my lungs.

‘Dukka-dun-dukka-dun…Some people stand in the darkness…!’

Rob clocks my entrance to the waves, but his expression doesn’t change; he’s pouring all his energy into swimming. He makes it to the kayak first and I watch as he begins an attempt to drag it toward the shore. By the time I make the hull, Rob already looks done in.

‘Oh, hello, Anna,’ Max says, polite as ever, moving past us on the other side of the boat — as if it’s the most normal thing in the world to see his parent’s friend in the water, fully clothed.

‘Morning, Max, having fun?’ I ask.

‘Well, I was, and then I leaned over a bit and the kayak just tipped! It was mental!’ He says in his usual excitable tone.

Rob tells Max to keep swimming toward shore, and says that we’ll take care of the kayak, so Max bobs on — still holding his fishing rod in front of him like some kind of moving statue. I look back at Rob, now on his back kicking with all his might, acting like a human tugboat as he tries to inch the kayak through the water. Water, which may as well be treacle at the rate the kayak is moving.

‘Want me to have a go?’ I ask. Rob nods and lets go.

I move around to the front of the boat and quickly realise why it’s zapping all his energy. Despite a few strong kicks, the kayak barely moves, and all the while it’s sinking downward, taking on water and getting even heavier. If we don’t get it out and onto the sand, it’ll only be a few minutes before it’s on the bottom of the sea.

‘Oh, my days! This thing weighs a ton!’ I shout in between pants. Half laughing, half exasperated.

‘Oh yeah, I put an anchor on it.’ Max calls over his shoulder, still swimming.

‘An anchor?’

‘Yeah, there’s a rock tied to the bow, you know, to stop it floating away.’ He puffs.

A few minutes later my feet make contact the sand, and a recharged Rob joins back in. Together we heave the kayak far enough out of the water so that it’s no longer going to float away… or sink.

‘Oh. The hatch is open.’ I say, looking at a round circle on the deck of the boat. A hatch that should be covered so that air stays in the kayak and water stays out.

‘Oh, that explains a lot,’ Rob says, helping me flip the boat over so that we can wedge one end in the sand and tip the water out. Once its hull is facing the sky again, I lift one end — thinking back to my rowing days when we used to have to do this if someone fell out of a boat on the river. (That someone was sometimes me).

‘You got it?’ Rob asks as I squat under one end of the kayak and press it above my head.

‘Yeah I got it. This is awesome!’ I say — veins pulsing with adrenaline. I am loving the simple challenge of lifting a heavy thing to do a thing that really needs doing. It beats throwing weights around in a gym.

We tip the kayak back and forth on its end for a few minutes, water sloshing out of the hatch at intervals. Once enough water is out, I drop the kayak down and flop onto my back on the sand — my lungs, arms, and legs all on fire. I’m buzzing. What a way to start a Thursday!

‘Well. That was fun!’ I say.

Rob is bent over next to me, hands on his knees, brown hair plastered to his face, sand stuck to his wet shins. He says nothing. He’s catching his breath.

Max is already thirty metres up the beach, rod slung over one shoulder, strolling off to find his mates and no doubt tell them all about his mini fishing adventure. Charlotte passes Max coming the other way. I watch her stop briefly to check her son over. She carries on down the beach toward us.

‘Oh, thanks Anna, are you two okay?’ she asks, reaching for the kayak to take over and drag it along the sand.

‘Oh, you know. Just Max being Max.’ Rob says as he straightens up, and then smiles.

I think this all very fun and a marvellous, adventurous addition to the morning, but I can’t be sure Rob feels the same. I get the feeling this is just another day in the life of parenting a teenager.

‘The things you do as a dad, eh?’ I say.

‘The things I do.’ He laughs and shakes his head.

The community on Koh Lanta has taken many shapes over these past few months. Sometimes it’s hosting a farewell pool party at your fancy villa, or being invited over to someone else’s place for a cinnamon bun breakfast. Other times it’s a friend offering to have your kid over for an online art class and feeding that kiddo dinner afterward.

And sometimes, just sometimes, it’s wading into the sea fully clothed to help rescue a thirteen-year-old whose boundless enthusiasm for fishing has led to a capsize.

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P.S ❤️ 👆🏻 Tapping the heart icon at the top or bottom of this post helps spread the tale to other people, and it gives me the warm fuzzies. It also means there is a chance David Hasselhoff will bound into your living room (I’ll leave you to decide whether this is a good or bad thing). 🏖️

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