NAC WAO From the Camp Staff Perspective

I’ve been going to Catalina for as long as I can remember. Our family would spend the last week of Summer in Avalon every year, trying the squeeze the last bit out of the season that we could. We’ve been going to Catalina for so long that our first trips over were on the seaplanes. Family folklore has it that I was even conceived there, but that’s a story for another time…

My sister and I learned to snorkel at Pebble Beach, in matching swimsuits, where I saw my first Garibaldi from a leaky, circular-shaped mask after spreading bread crusts in the water around Lovers Cove. Then we advanced to the Casino area, where the scuba divers would go, hoping to see one of the boats that had sunk there long ago. We used frozen peas to fish with drop lines off the green pier, always with the fear of accidentally catching a Garibaldi and suffering a huge fine for catching the state fish. We went horseback riding up on the fire trails and would occasionally run into a bison and would have to sit and wait for the bison to get off the trail because there wasn’t room for both of us. My first experience paddling was on a heavy, wooden, red paddleboard, rented from the side of the pier. I could escape on my own and paddle around the mooring field, quietly sneaking around all the boats that had come across the channel for the weekend. As I got older, I had friends with family boats and was able to motor or sail across the channel and explore different parts of the island my family hadn’t been to. Little did I know that not too many years after that, I’d be racing a 6-person outrigger canoe across the very same channel that we flew over for family vacations. These canoes would become my preferred method of transportation to Catalina for years to come.

Fast forward a few decades and many crossings to Catalina later, on a variety of watercraft, I return to outrigger paddling and soon hear about this small group of people doing ocean-related activities with cancer fighters on Catalina. This sounds awesome! To be able to share my love of the ocean, love of Catalina, and all it offers with people who may have never been there before sounded like something I wanted to be a part of. The NAC We Are Ocean camp is in an area of Catalina I wasn’t familiar with, Emerald Cove. It’s a Boy Scout camp throughout the year, that generously hosts other groups and allows them to use their facilities. With the collaborative efforts of the Newport Aquatic Center, the We Are Ocean camp is an escape where cancer fighters can swim, snorkel, sail, paddle, float, share, talk, cry, laugh, sing, dance, hike, craft, and basically do whatever the heck these fantastic humans want to do.

This is where I met Cynthia. Cynthia is a first-time camper. She is a three-time cancer survivor, a Cambodian refugee who survived the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, a wife and mother of three, but one of the most interesting facts about Cynthia is that she doesn’t swim. Who the heck goes to an ocean activities camp and doesn’t know how to swim?! Well, I soon learned that this was just a minor hurdle for this survivor and nothing clunky-fitting PFD couldn’t remedy.

Once Cynthia got her first taste of paddling a 6-person outrigger canoe, game on! She then wanted to paddle the 2-person canoe, then a kayak, then a paddleboard. All with her trusty PFD, no floating vessel was safe from her desire to get on the water. She wanted to paddle even when it wasn’t designated paddling time and would ask any of the counselors to take her out. I’m not sure if Cynthia is a big talker on land, but if talking is an indicator of her excitement on the water, she was VERY excited! Questions, stories, observations…it was fantastic! I got to share what I knew, I got to learn about her, and I was able to see very familiar parts of the ocean through Cynthia’s fresh and inquisitive eyes.

When it came to snorkeling, she wasn’t comfortable enough to float on her own, so she lay across my paddleboard, face down, fins up, and I paddled her all around Doctor’s Cove, finding the lobster hiding under a rock, a huge abalone disappearing and reappearing behind the kelp forest. If there was a fish to be seen, we weren’t leaving until she saw them all. Cynthia’s enthusiasm brought me back to my matching swimsuit days, discovering my first garibaldi underwater, and trying to speak through my snorkel to tell anyone who would listen.

Just two weeks ago, I was able to paddle with Cynthia again. Still with the same enthusiasm and energy as the first time we met. She was preparing for a local, short-distance outrigger canoe race. But that’s just a warm-up. Cynthia has the long-term aspiration to paddle in the Wild Buffalo Relay coming in April of this year. This race crosses the Catalina Channel from Avalon to NAC. So, in less than a year, this non-swimming, 3-time cancer survivor is going to paddle a human-powered craft 32 miles across the Pacific Ocean. If that’s not inspiring, I don’t know what is. Right on, Cynthia!

Natalie Rigolet