Those who are familiar would know that the Perhentian islands in the northern part of the western coast of peninsular Malaysia are comprised of two islands: the Kecil (smaller) and the Besar (larger) that overlook each other across a channel that is roughly over half a kilometre wide. The middle of this channel is pretty deep and one will always find current during the early months of the year. Yesterday morning, and upon my insistence, we hired a kayak with the intention of trying it out, and seeing where it takes us. I sometimes act overambitious and this time, I declared that we would be using the kayak to paddle around the Kecil island (this would have been extremely arduous and no less risky for a first timer).

The first fuck up was when we boarded the two seater kayak back to front, instead of front to back. This made the seating extremely uncomfortable but we assumed that this is how kayaks are.

Since we had hired the kayak from the Besar island, we headed out straight into the channel, seated backwards in the kayak, and paddled across to the Kecil island successfully. This gave us an immense boost.

We pulled the kayak onto a beach which we realised was mainly used to dump garbage and thus the water there was very murky and the waves beating on the shore, too, were quite unsuited for launching a kayak back into the water. However, after resting for a little while, and discovering that we had been seated wrongly all this while, we expended great effort to get the kayak back into the water and after several unsuccessful attempts, we were finally in.

We also realized that it would not be physically possible to paddle around the island as initially planned so the best option was to return to the opposite shore and have a good lunch to call it a day.

This time, I decided that instead of paddling furiously as if in a kayak competition, we would let the waves push us along to the opposite side. So we let the kayak do its thing. We paddled occasionally but soon realized that the current was pulling us parallel to the channel out into the open sea instead of taking us to the opposite shore. Thereupon, I began to paddle quickly and earnestly to get us across the current.

However, the sea suddenly turned choppy and waves became uncontrollable. The kayak started to swamp, i.e. began to fill up with water. My wife panicked, and soon our little boat capsized and we were in the water, being tossed around between waves, and slowly being pulled towards the open sea.

Initially I tried to latch on to the overturned kayak and also tried to salvage the paddles. Soon I realised that the better option was to save our lives first. So we started to swim across the choppy waves. I think we hardly made any progress. The current was quite strong.

This was when we started to shout for help. No one heard us.

After about five minutes of floating like logs, we heard the sound of a motorboat coming in our direction. It was a fisherman's small boat which had seen our raft from the shore and had come to rescue us. At first they couldn't spot us (because we had floated away from the kayak) but eventually they did and we were saved.

This was when I decided that I would never raft away from the shore ever again in a sea that has an undercurrent going on.

Tl;Dr

Ambitiously kayaked in a strong current, got thrown in the water, lost all hope of being saved, but were eventually saved by a fisherman.