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ExWeb book preview: Mick Dawson vs. sea serpents
Apr 21, 2005 14: 31 EST
Last year, Golden Gate rower Mick Dawson was rescued on August 22nd after his row boat capsized (see previous ExWeb story). Mick left Choshi, Japan, on May 6th, 2004 in his second attempt to reach Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, CA. As Dawson found out, one of the interesting aspects of ocean rowing is the close proximity to “the life aquatic.” In the following excerpt from Mick Dawson’s upcoming book about the 2004 row, he recounts a close encounter with some hungry visitors:
“…The creature was at least two meters long and as thick at its middle as an anaconda. I couldn’t believe my eyes and at first put it down to a trick of the poor light, until I saw, only moments later, another of these creatures swim by, then another followed by another, all just below the surface of the water, menacingly, within touching distance. It appeared my dimly lit rowing boat had somehow become the focal point for a large group of predators that had seemingly leapt from the pages of an ancient mariners’ drunken tale.”
Terrifying serpents
“I had by this stage of the voyage attracted a motley crew of glum looking fish beneath the hull of ‘Mrs D,’ who I had come too described as my ‘tenants.’ They’d apparently, though as it turned out rather mistakenly, seen the shadow of the hull as a safe haven from the many and varied predators of the North Pacific and, in fairness to them, up to that point they’d been proven right."
"However the arrival of these terrifying serpents must have come as an even greater shock to them than it did to me, because for the next five or ten minutes I watched, ‘secure’ from the deck of my rowing boat, within arms length of them as they decimated my tenants and presumably any other unfortunate passer by they stumbled upon.”
Helpless prey
“It was an incredible sight, they were without doubt the most aggressive predators I’d ever seen at sea, or on land for that matter. Moving like lightening bolts through the water they hit their helpless prey and engulfed them like boa constrictors, their whole bodies folding into a seething knot on impact. It was as awe inspiring as the emergence of the whales earlier in the evening but with a far greater sense of menace.”
Huge conger eels?
“On the deck of Mrs. D in the partial darkness, I still couldn’t convince myself of what I was seeing. They appeared to be large conger eels, probably as many as seven or eight of them, but I was a thousand miles off the coast of Japan and with many hundreds of meters of ocean beneath me. Surely conger eels didn’t roam the ocean in predatory groups like this. As the last of my tenants received their eviction orders the activity in the water reduced and the sightings beneath and around my boat diminished before finally ending.”
The second course
“I am not embarrassed to admit the whole encounter had left me slightly unnerved, the episode had come as a complete shock certainly beyond any of my previous experiences and then, as now, I couldn’t fully explain what I’d seen. I sat back on the rowing seat looking out into the darkness hoping to locate these unusual assassins to identify them once and for all when, to my horror, little more than an oars length away, I saw one of these creatures, head raised eighteen inches out of the water staring directly back at me out of the darkness. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and to compound my mounting terror when I looked to my left two more of them were, likewise, elevated above the surface of the ocean, their gaze intently fixed on me, one no more than a couple of meters away…”
Mick Dawson’s book is not yet published. He is currently looking for a publisher. Dawson plans to make another North Pacific row next year.
Last year, His sat phone stopped working and his home team didn't hear from him in a month. Then a message from Mick was delivered to his home team through a skipper named Shakhid from a passing Bangladeshi vessel. He had been at sea roughly two and a half months before his rescue beacon was activated. He was picked up on August 22nd.
Image of Mick in the cabin of his boat courtesy of goldengate-endeavour.com
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