Random encounters with people every now and then end up seeming like maybe they were meant to be.  Sometimes we take for granted just getting out, talking to people or even sharing your passion or enthusiasm with other people and opt not too.  But maybe a random encounter and conversation about what you like to do or how you live your life can actually influence someone else, or maybe even through them impact and influence something even greater.

While on vacation on his way up to Tahoe, Joe stopped by the Delta to check the place out and hopefully sail for a few days.  He would end up getting one day of good wind, pretty much the last day of the almost 2 months of non stop wind in the delta.  The next 3 days would be  light (by light I mean to say NO wind) and hot! After the hottest day of the heat spell he invites me to try his standup paddle board. I liked it. It was quiet, relaxing and remarkably stable for never having been on an official paddle board before.  Despite only getting one day of windsurfing he said that just simply having the time off to lay under the shade of a tree and enjoy the leaves rustling, to paddle on the river and just be somewhere else was priceless (...he actually described sitting under the trees and the leaves rustling to a trip he once had in Maui).

Enter Kevin who still sails to this day at the spot that I learned how to windsurf... Shoreline Lake in Mt View, CA.  He dropped me a line saying he was going to pick up the standup paddle board I had told him about.  After looking online and checking out hundreds of boards, he felt that this RRD Wassup 10' would be perfect.  Planning to use it in on his trips to Southern California to do some light wind small wave sailing and maybe even some paddling, and when it was light back home even some light wind freestyle at Shoreline.  Kevin was probably one of the biggest influences in me continuing to windsurf as a kid. He was always the cool dude out windsurfing and going fast that I looked up to!  So here he was retired, making a trip to get a paddle board I had showed him and I had never really done it!

So there I was a day after trying SUP'ing for the first time, and a day before Kevin came for his paddle board, sitting on Delta Windsurf's couch.  So I took the demo 8'5" RRD Wassup and loaded it into my van.  Driving out to the end on another hot windless day I grab the board and go out for a sunset paddle, traveling around the Islands going down river further then I had ever gone with the sun making the hills black and the water look like liquid gold.

Here is a picture (left) of Joe the day before, during the same time I was out with the sun and water identical. 

So I'm out enjoying the view on my first paddle when I hear some yelling from the shore, a swimmer had swam out and been taken out a lot further then they could swim back with the strong tide.  I paddle over and ask how they were doing and if they needed help, we agreed that they would be unable to swim back against the tide.  Trying a few different options of pulling them on the board, but none were very stable for the two of us to make any ground.  Also having them hold onto the board as I paddled also did not get us anywhere. Not hip as to what to do in this case I was running out of options.  But then one of their friends came out on a board he borrowed from a windsurfer and a kayak paddle, upon reaching us I felt better because maybe they both could sit on that board and hold on to the leash as we both paddled.  Well on paper that sounded good, but despite being on a really large windsurfing board neither could balance on the board sitting/laying/kneeling and stay on.  Spotting a boat near by I paddle over as they continued to struggle and get the boat to take them both in.

Granted I was on an 8'5" and a newbie as far as those techniques go, and did not actually get them back under the power of the Paddle board.  But I was out on the water and I did keep someone afloat who may have otherwise been unable to remain floating.  Normally I wouldn't have been anywhere near the water on a no wind day, and if I was I would definitely not been on a paddle board or in any position to be of any help.  But because of an encounter with Joe from Southern California, and one of my childhood windsurfing role models, I was on the water.  Not only was I on the water but I was on the water at the right time and place! Who knows, maybe the Coast Guard would have found them and they would be OK, but then maybe you would be hearing about this in a different way on your local news.  Even as I try and think about it now, I still don't know what to say about how random and how perfectly the whole scenario played out.