Island in the River

As the day went by, Tom started to feel restless. He felt stupid. It was one thing to be out kayaking and landing on an island in the middle of the river, but it was another to somehow run the fibre-glass kayak aground, shattering bits of its keel, making it completely unseaworthy. A simple day trip was fast becoming more of a hassle than anything else.

Tom lamented. He had inspected the kayak before, and it was all fine and what-not, good for the sea. And he was no amateur either, having hundreds of kayaking trips prior to this one all over the place. Yet he managed to screw this one up bad. He blamed it on not scouting the island well enough---he might have discovered that the shore was lined with ridiculously sharp rock, as opposed to the sandy-type shores that he was expecting given what he had seen.

He sat there on the shore, looking across the river. The river was around two hundred metres wide, and the island was roughly in the middle of it all. Swimming back to shore was out of the question due to the strong underwater currents---he felt that when he was making his way over. There was no cellphone reception, and he didn't really bring anything more than a day pack, which meant that he had nothing that was usable for camping. Luckily it was summer time, and therefore the nights wouldn't be so bad. Food wasn't an issue because he brought along some dry rations that could last him a while.

His only hope was that Frieda would realise that he hadn't gotten back yet after she returned from her visit to her parents' place. He had sent her a text message telling her about his trip to the island for exploration and gave an estimated time of arrival back at the house, and he was hoping that when she returned, she would realise that he wasn't back yet and get all panicky and contact the right people to get help out to him.

Then he remembered that she had replied that she wouldn't be back till after the weekend. So much for a quick rescue.

Tom sighed. Things weren't going as well as he could. The rations wouldn't last, and the lack of water was going to be a problem. It wasn't that the river was salty, but that it was unfiltered. He'd rather take his chances at dehydration than to chug the river water and be down with some kind of massive diarrhoea problem from poisoning.

Tom stood up, resolute. Help wasn't going to reach him in time, and already it was getting into the late part of the afternoon, which meant that he had no more than three hours of daylight left. He had to patch the kayak somehow. At least the rest of the structure was doing okay, except for the shattered hole at the keel where water would definitely leak through. He started scouring the island for something to patch the hole with and to bail out any excess water. He knew that he wasn't going to make it off the island that evening, but he wanted to make sure that he had a chance of escape the next day when the sun rose once again.

For once, he was thankful that summer had the shortest nights in the whole year.

(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 2014-05-26 18:01:24)