Biscayne NP, Florida
The waters of Biscayne National Park are beautiful, especially when you get into the calm, clear channels on the keys on a paddleboard. This was the setting for my little (mis)adventure. I’d never been paddleboarding before, so for the guided tour I initially opted for a 2-person kayak for me and my teenage son. When we got there, the guide did everything he could to talk us out of the kayak and into paddleboards, so after some reassuring words, we opted for the boards.
Paddleboarding on the clear shallow waters between mangroves in the keys off Biscayne Bay
All went well initially, and I found the paddleboard was easy to maneuver, and I had no trouble sitting or kneeling on it. It came in really handy when moving through the mangrove “tunnels” at high tide and you could just lay on your back and float under the branches… not sure how that would have worked with a kayak! I got up the nerve to stand up on it (everyone else was doing it…), but I didn’t feel stable and sat back down.
The paddleboard also made a great platform for trying out my new underwater camera! Similar to a Go Pro, I had picked it up specifically for this trip and the snorkeling we’d be doing the next day in Dry Tortugas NP. I figured I’d try it out on the paddleboard trip, so I rigged up a strap, dipped it in the water, and started shooting away! The strap wasn’t too conducive to paddling, so when I wasn’t using it, I just stuffed it in the pocket of my swimsuit. All went well all the way back to the boat, and I started to convince myself that I too could tame the paddleboard by standing on it, so I did!
A nurse shark about to scoot under my paddleboard–captured by the camera!
All was good for a few minutes, and I was starting to think I’d mastered this silly thing. The last step was to paddle up to the boat for a picture with my son. I made it to the boat, but I had to turn the paddleboard to get to where I needed to be for the picture. Turn complete… moving a little with the tide… need to get about six feet closer… almost there… oops, a little off balance… foot back… wait, board tilting!!! Splash! There I went into the chilly 70 degree water, shirt, sandals, hat, glasses and all! Thankfully I had just sealed my phone back into its waterproof bag about 20 seconds earlier (when I realized “hey wait, I’m standing up, I might tip and that would be bad”). I scrambled back to the paddleboard and draped over it, letting everyone know I was fine (albeit slightly embarrassed and very wet), and letting out a good laugh because the joke was on me!
I climbed back onto the boat reassuring our guide I was fine, took off my hat and shirt to wring them out, and then took turns exchanging snide remarks about my coordination with my teenager (snide remarks come natural at that age). Then I felt in my pocket… where’s my camera? “Has anyone seen my camera?” A quick look around by everyone confirmed my fears–it had not come out of the water with me and was somewhere “down there!”
Our boat tour anchored in a beautiful little channel where we got off to paddleboard… the site of “the incident”
All of us strained over the sides of the boat looking down into the sand and grass. We prodded at a couple shiny objects in the sea grass with a paddle, but no camera. The tide current at this point was pretty strong, and I didn’t really know how buoyant my camera was, so as far as I knew, it had floated halfway down the channel or out to sea. I prayed “Lord, please help me find the camera” but had that thought that this might instead be His plan for yet another life lesson about pride and humility that would cost me a little something. We pulled the boat around a bit on the anchor chain to get some looks in new directions, but… nothing. After 15 minutes of looking while the guide was securing all the gear and getting ready to leave, I had given up hope. What really bummed me out was not the pictures I’d already taken but all the pictures I’d miss snorkeling the next day. I told the guide “well, I think it’s gone… no worries, it’s just a thing.”
One more tug on the anchor to pull it up and we’d be off, my camera lost forever to the waves like so many nearby shipwrecks… ok, that’s a bit dramatic. Just then, with the last swing of the boat toward the anchor, my teenage son yells “I see it–right there!” Sure enough, there it was; it had been hiding under the boat the whole time! Shirt back off, sandals off, glasses off, cleared with the captain, and splash again! The water felt much better this time around without all that stuff weighing me down, and with a few directions from those on deck to get me over it in the current, I took one dive, made a couple of strokes up-current, reached toward the darkest shape I could see in the salt water without my glasses, and emerged victorious with the camera! Prayer answered!
Coming up triumphant with camera in hand after it spent 20 minutes lost on the bottom of the channel
As a follow-up, the camera went on to take many more wonderful pictures underwater the next day at Dry Tortugas. I have not tried to stand on a paddleboard since, and now I have another great and humiliating national park story to tell!
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