Wednesday, April 21, 2010
WAVES nearly two feet high. Thunder shook the water and clapped my eardrums. Lightning whiting everything, blinding me.
I didn’t take my own advice and let myself be caught in the very teeth of a lightning storm in the middle of Lake Kenneth yesterday.
I found out first hand that when lightning strikes near enough, it is AUDIBLE. The sound of the crackling bolt is very similar to that of a matchstick being snapped in two.
Launching from Peacock Point with the first rays of the sun, the day started quite well. Other than a pleasant brace of peacock bass and toman landed, I even managed to land a table size sebarau on a 14gm Duel Shallow Stick (fire green colour). That was a real surprise; rare in Lake Kenneth. By 5pm, I was trying to get the haruan to strike in Arnold’s Nook.
This Google Earth map will probably not be very clear here. Which is fine, since it is meant to be exclusive to our gang of kayak fishers. But for illustration purposes, I was paddling from the far left to the far right on the main lake.
I could see a storm system wreaking havoc on Kampar to the northeast. It was 16km away if I draw a straight line on the map. But since the wind was blowing from the south, I figured that the storm wouldn’t reach Lake Kenneth.
Then the wind went shivering cold.
Oh sh!t.
The first sign of a storm coming down on our heads after a hot, hot day is always when the wind suddenly turns very cold.
I studied the sky and found another, slightly smaller storm system suddenly developing from the southwest. And the southern wind was blowing it hard to join up with the system terrorizing Kampar.
I knew things were gonna get bad. But I didn’t really worry at first. I took my sweet time paddling out of the Hideout. When I reached Toman Corner, I paused for a cigarette and let the southern wind carry me back to Peacock Point. By the time I finished my puff, I realised I had made a horrible mistake. I was now right between two clashing storms.
The wind suddenly changed direction, and blew hard from the west. I was still at least 1km away from Peacock Point and right in the centre of the lake. Even as I began to paddle hard, the water took the cue from the gusts. Waves nearly two feet tall crashed into my starboard side. My Boogeese rocked like crazy. No choice. Must angle the kayak to take the waves diagonally and reach Peacock Point on a triangular route.
The crashing waves sent volumes of water up deck. Water splashed into my face and sunglasses, obscuring my vision. But I didn’t dare to miss even one stroke of the paddle to clean my face or the wind and waves would push my bow and make me face the waves fully from the starboard again. The winds and waves were so strong that I only had to keep paddling port side most times to keep the kayak in the right direction.
As the fear rose, adrenalin flooded my bloodstream. And I felt gloriously alive! I really love adrenalin, man. I paddled ceaselessly, with a power I never knew I had. The precious hormone fueled my muscles, and I laughed and whooped and shrieked and screamed for none but the jealous gods to hear. Too bad I didn’t bring my camera along. Just a photo of the bow crashing into the two-foot waves, sending spray high up, would have been beautiful.
No storm photo. But here, the section of the lake in the background is where I was caught. I was way out there. This photo makes the lake look so placid, doesn’t it? Photo by HeraldSun, with thanks.
Then I officially became in trouble. It sounds just like a matchstick being snapped in two. Just a slight ‘tck-tck’. White filled my vision. Half a second later, the thunder clapped. It was so loud that I felt it in my chest cavity.
A few seconds later. It happened again. Tck-tck. White. Thunderclap.
The realization that I was attracting lightning brought a sickening feeling of horror. I was out on flat terrain. My stupid head was the highest point on the lake. My rod was graphite composite. My paddle was aluminum. My bloodstream was now nearly neat with adrenalin.
Old photo. Nearly in the centre of Lake Kenneth. Photo by Kman, with thanks.
When I reached Peacock Point, in one smooth flow, I jumped out, ran forward, grabbed the Boogeese tow line, pulled the kayak up the beach and raced to squat beneath a rock ledge. Always find the lowest depression on the ground. Never hide under a tree.
But 10 seconds later, I raced back to the kayak to grab my tackle box and doubled back just as quickly to the rock ledge, all the time imagining that Zeus had his sniper scope aimed directly at me. Why did I do that? Because my cigarettes were in my tackle box! It might be great to die in Lake Kenneth, but if it’s gonna be like that, I wanna die with a cigarette between my teeth!
The rain never did hit Lake Kenneth. The hard wind blew the two storms together in a mad symphony of crashing thunder. I watched the western wind send the storm off from Kampar to the Teluk Intan area.
When I finally felt safe enough to stand up, the sky right above me was bright again.
Still intoxicated with adrenalin, I drove the 20km off road to reach home while singing to Bon Jovi at the top of my lungs.
Alive. Gloriously alive.
Murphy’s Three-fold Law:
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Nothing is ever as easy as it looks.
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Everything will take longer than you think it should.
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If anything can possibly go wrong, it will.
So, let’s kayak and fish together :-). Just glad that you’re are safe. Cheers!
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