Cape Town - Ten years ago, I bought a boat. It’s technically a kayak, but people who grow bean sprouts and wear sporty sunglasses like to call any seagoing craft a “boat”.
I picked that up early. After wrestling my kayak off the roof rack, I’d stagger across the sand with it on my shoulder like a drunken pall-bearer. The hot plastic of the boat smelled like the shoe section at Mr Price. Invariably, some aquatic man would hurry over, his triangular torso all tanned and taut; zinc war paint on his nose. “Want a hand with the boat?” he would ask. Because I read all the wolves (Virginia, Naomi and Women Who Run With), and because the sleeves of my T-shirt were usually hooked on a bungee, I would casually wave him off. “I’m cool.”
Durban back then was anything but cool. Once I’d arranged my lifejacket, slathered on sun cream, adjusted my very fashionable board shorts and pushed myself off the sand, I’d be sweating like a sheep farmer at a sushi festival. The summer weather then was predictable: muggy and blazing in the morning, cloudy in the afternoon and the promise of metronomic lightning in the evening.
I would head out towards the shark nets, slide over them and paddle out towards the horizon, stopping when I was far enough from shore to just make the beach. The boat bobbed on the swells, the paddle drooled water from its blades and all was silent and blue and sparkling.
I had bought the boat to conquer fear. When I was six years old, I’d been sideswiped in the shallows by a rogue wave. I was sucked out to sea and spat out next to a mussel-clad pier. Sucked and spat out, sucked and spat out, grated like a piece of Emmental against the shells. My father plunged in and plucked me to safety. A nurse from Addington Hospital smothered me in mercurochrome. For years after that, I would panic in the ocean. I had to be life-saved at least twice.
Since moving to Cape Town nine years ago, I have kayaked once. That hot Sunday, I launched off Hout Bay and spent the first five minutes scanning for sharks, the next five thinking about sharks, the five after that imagining sharks and the last five windmilling my way back to shore like a madwoman. It was no longer the sea that scared me, but what lurked in its depths – rows of bared teeth, snouts full of scars.
Summers came and went. I’d sit on the beach watching surfers catch waves. Paddlers pushed off and disappeared. As I swam, ducking under breakers and surfacing, I gazed out towards the horizon, yearning to be where there was nothing but wind and birds and the sound of water slapping plastic.
I would have to tackle the creature fear. A few months ago, I signed up to go snorkelling with seals. I’d watched enough National Geographic documentaries to know that seals are the bar snacks of the ocean, flung like salted peanuts into the mouths of show-off sharks. If anything would cure my phobia, this would be it.
For 45 minutes, curious, goggle-eyed seals swam up to my mask to peer at me. The winter sea heaved and churned. They darted and spun, pirouetted and swirled, leaving comets of bubbles in their wake. There were kelp ribbons and the flippers of swimmers; the underwater fizz of sand kicked up. I squealed and giggled and spat icy water out of my snorkel. By the time I clambered back onto the boat, I couldn’t feel my hands.. Nor my ankles. Nor my face. But I could feel my water body returning.
Last week, I took my boat and launched it near Mouille Point. The sun was out, people were jogging along the promenade. There were cappuccinos in cafés and other paddlers up ahead. I breathed deeply as I dipped and pulled, tracking a line parallel with the shore. Sea Point’s apartment blocks slid by. I gazed up at their windows, scanning for figures on balconies, wondering about the lives within. The lawns were filled with life: children on swings, dogs bounding, lazy benches holding languid couples.
A breeze flicked drops of water on my face, my biceps tightened, I tasted salt and grinned.
I became poignantly aware that fear is something we invent – a tangle of knots which, if we allow it, grows big teeth and razor blades. But because we are its creator, we are also able to control it. We can vapourise it into nothing so that only silence and wind remain.
And as I paddled on, my body growing tired and my butt increasingly wet, I thought about sharks and riptides. And I figured that if I got eaten, or sucked out to Tasmania, I would at least be out there doing something that makes me happy. Better that than shrinking indoors, worrying about the unseen and the below.
Cape Argus