![\"Swim](\"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/ayearofsongs\/images\/blogimages\/SwimOrDie2.jpg\")
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H<\/span>e had these big skindiver fins. A lot of the other bodysurfers used duck feet, which were shorter and stiffer, more maneuverable. His weren’t that great for turning and jumping in a wave, but they had a lot of power.<\/p>\n That summer, Pacific storms drove in huge waves in long sets and he’d swim way out, until the people on the beach were specks, more than a quarter mile away. It was a long pier, almost a thousand feet, and sometimes he would go way past the end, maybe double its length.<\/p>\n Often, he’d be turned back or offered “a ride” by Coast Guard patrol boats. He never took them up on it. Once they insisted.<\/p>\n But at night you were on your own.<\/p>\n It wasn’t that he set out to see how far out he could get — on the contrary, he often worried that he was growing too complacent as he let the seemingly ever present undertow pull him to the “way outside breaks.”<\/p>\n Swimming out was generally a breeze — particularly if you knew where the outflow channels formed. Swimming in, on the other hand, could, at times, be grueling work. More than a few times he warily measured his progress against the pier and noticed he was actually moving backwards even as he swam forward. That was often a signal to swim laterally to escape a local outflow.<\/p>\n Swimming in could take as much as 45 minutes or an hour or more. It was hard work but a good chance to think. And it was good discipline. If you got lazy, you were drawn out to sea. If you found yourself musing about how vulnerable you were, started imagining the sea predators that might be swimming, unseen within feet of you, you might panic.<\/p>\n Once, when he was about 3\/4 of the length of the pier out and coming in, he did <\/span>feel something fairly massive bump into his leg. He continued his steady pace, but his heart was pounding. He steadied himself by fixing his mind on keeping his stroke and kick steady, forcing out any conjecture as to the nature of whatever had bumped into him.<\/p>\n When he was “safe” inside the ring of shore surf, he allowed himself to imagine that it was probably a sea lion. He’d seen sea lions often enough playing in the waves along the shore. It wouldn’t surprise him that a sea lion might be curious about a swimmer so far out.<\/p>\n His heart was still beating hard when he caught a couple of waves taking him straight into shore. He rode the second in until he was in such shallow water he had to push himself up out of the water with his hands, like a calisthenic.<\/p>\n He finally allowed himself to look over his shoulder.<\/p>\n But all he saw was the dark, choppy sea.<\/p>\n\n