Wes -> "short" story

This is my story, its kinda long but its a true story:

As a boy scout I have been to summer camp several times. One camp that I’ve been to is Emerald Bay on Catalina Island. Most camps usually last a week or so and you do a variety of activities each day like shooting, swimming, etc. I wanted to do sailing which was supposed to be pretty fun. Every afternoon, me and three other boys would go sailing around the bay. This was fun and we just cruised around. As we prepared to go out on the third day, we had little idea of what was in store for us. We always got everything we needed prepared before for we went out on the water. I was getting life jackets, and the other kids were getting the sails rigged. There were three boats, the S.S. Minnow, the Turtle, and the Blow me………Wind. As you could probably tell from the names of these boats, none of them were particularly awe inspiring. We had decided to take the Turtle since we thought it was the best of the three. The counselor who was in our boat was a young blond kid, probably 17 or 18. I remember asking him if we needed a radio and he said no. We finally got our boat in the water and started heading out of the bay.

About the same time we got out of the bay, the weather started to change for the worse. The sky quickly darkened and wind picked up. The scenery started to resemble that of “a Perfect Storm” We didn’t seem to notice at first, but soon the wind was howling and waves got bigger. We started racing along, the wind whipping through our hair and the smell of the sea everywhere. We were all yelling and cursing and laughing. It was really exhilarating. The boat would be in the air for seconds as we launched over waves. In order to keep the boat stable, me and my friend were leaning way off the port side of the boat. At one point the boat was almost completely horizontal. This was really cool, until we flipped.

It was then our boat took up its name, and turtled. At we this point we were all laughing and cursing in the water. We grabbed hold of the boat and decided what to do next. I gave my glasses to the counselor, and tried to help them flip the boat over. Being inexperienced with sailing, we had trouble flipping it over again, because it was our first time. We tried several times, and after a few minutes I was laughing hysterically. To this day I am still not quite sure why holding onto a turtled boat a mile off shore was funny, but anyways we managed to flip the boat back over.

Under most circumstances, this would have been ok. But being the inexperienced sailors that we were, it wasn’t. We had forgotten one very important thing, to unrig the sails. When we flipped the boat back over, the sails were taut and the boat promptly took off dragging two kids and the counselor, who were holding on to the boat at the time. I had apparently forgotten one of the most important rules, don't let go of the boat.

So, there I was; sitting in the ocean without my glasses watching my comrades get carried off by a runaway sailboat. I was floating there with the fifth kid laughing. After about ten minutes though, the reality sank in that they wouldn’t be able to get back to me easily because they would have to fight against the wind. I decided that I would start swimming towards camp (or what I thought was camp). The other kid thought he would be better off floating there. A half hour in the water I was getting nervous. I knew that nobody would notice I was gone for a couple of hours, the other boat would have a hell of a time trying to get us, and I couple possibly drown. Despite being not very religious, I started praying. I was reminded of the famous quote “there are no atheists in foxholes”.

Meanwhile, the other boat was facing rough times too. While three people would usually be enough to sail the boat, one kid was curled up on the floor (scared shitless) repeating “we’re all gonna die” over and over again. So it was up to the two to sail the boat back to rescue us. They had a hard time keeping track of us, as we were small dots bobbing up and down and were unlucky enough to get blue life jackets. What kind of idiotic company manufactures blue life jackets anyways?

After about 45 minutes in the water, swimming and praying, I saw a boat. Sure it was the Turtle I started yelling/cursing at them to come pick me up. As they approached I realized that it wasn’t the Turtle and quickly started praying that in fact that had not heard me. When they got closer they asked if I needed help and picked me up. Luckily they had not heard any of my angry rant. They brought to me to their camp, which was a mile or so below Emerald Bay. There they contacted my camp and alerted them of the situation. At that point I must have been either really calm or in shock, because all I said was “can I get a towel and where’s the bathroom?” The kid who decided not to swim got hypothermia but was eventually picked up. By that evening I was finally reunited with all my friends and from then on we always took a radio when we went sailing.