Pronounces "keypose"

I spent a week in Quepos on the Pacific Coast with eleven students for an Ocean Survival course at the Costa Rica Coast Guard Academy. Just getting there met one of my goals for this time in Costa Rica: I wanted to see the sun rise over the Atlantic and see it set over the Pacific on the same day, and no airplane. En route to the west coast, we stopped at a bridge known for viewing crocodiles. On the riverbank below I counted 22 of them ranging up to about 12 feet. A tourist pitched half a hot dog off the bridge just to see what would happen. I always recommend this. In a blur of snapping jaws and lashing tails, several large semi-submerged crocs levitated onto the bank, smashing the lesser crocs aside. I never guessed so many pounds of reptile could move so fast. It was a real “Mutual of Omaha, Wild Kingdom” moment.

The Costa Rica Coast Guard Academy is situated on the former grounds of the headquarters of an American palm oil corporation. When they gave up the ghost, they gave up the compound. It’s built into a steep hillside within earshot of Pacific combers and has a turn of the 20th Century, Panama Canal Zone feel to it. The United States never did the colonial empire thing on a scale comparable to that of the big European powers. It offended our “Declaration of Independence” sensibilities and the “purfuit of happineff.” Plus, we had a Civil War to fight and Indians to kill. Busy times. But to the extent we did colonize, the Panama Canal Zone was probably the pinnacle of that effort. Slicing a corridor down the middle of a country and calling it yours, after instigating that country to break away from a different country (Columbia) at gunboat gunpoint has yet to be improved upon. If you’re going to do something wrong, you might as well do it right. 

Like the old Canal Zone, the buildings here at the Academy have high ceilings for the heat and broad verandas for the breeze. Evening showers play timpani on the shallow-pitched metal roofs that replenish the cisterns. Staircases connect the campus, and a shape-without-name, waterless pool invites you to pretend you are at a resort. Despite the shattered palladium windows of the abandoned hospital, and the graffiti throughout the hallways and wards, you can see that it was impressive in its day. The Academy retains a campus feel but the buckled and tilted walkways, the bent railings, the worm eaten structures and the ghastly road leading up the hill give it a haunted feel. 

The ‘Guardascostas’ do the best they can with what they have but they don’t have much. For instance, their library is the size of my kitchen and their life jackets are on loan from the U.S. Coast Guard. Famously, Costa Rica has no military and this seems to have produced a cultural aversion to anything involving a uniformed service. Unfortunately, this extends to the Coast Guard. Despite their rather wholesome mission of saving lives, and thwarting illegal fishing and drug runners, they get little funding and possibly less respect. I feel sorry for these guys. If they could see the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, or Maine Maritime Academy for that matter, they’d probably take off their uniforms and crawl under a rock. Nowadays in the U.S. whole lives can be lived with no personal connection to the military. But, boy, if it weren’t there you’d know it in a hurry. 

I have gone through Ocean Survival courses before. Usually it entailed a pool, power point, and lunch. Here it culminated in a 4 kilometer open water swim that segued directly into spending the night in the ocean. In it.

A life float is not a life raft. A life raft has a floor that holds out the ocean and it has a canopy that holds body heat in. A life float is a rectangular pontoon with netting in the middle and handles along the sides. In the U.S. life floats are only approved for vessels that operate very close to shore. A life float provides buoyancy and something to hang onto. You can straddle the pontoon and get the crucial heat-loss parts of your body out of the water. Or you can relax in the netting, but you’re mostly submerged. Or you can just hold on. We had a life float. It was a decrepit affair with blown out netting and handles adrift. It was designed for 8 and we were 12.

We never tire of talking about how hot it is here. My first instinct when walking out into the street, or boarding a bus, or even swimming in the University pool, is to locate the shady side. But even with sea temperatures of 84 degrees, if you stay in the water long enough, your body temperature will move inexorably closer to that of the ocean and you will die looking at a palm tree. It’s a one way ticket.

The float was anchored just off some jagged cliffs and offshore crags around which the surf sucked and surged. There was a bluff overlooking the bay where supposedly someone was monitoring us. I must admit, it was lovely place to suffer. Other than the whistles attached to our PFDs (Personal Flotation Device), we had no COMMs (communication). There was no RHIB (Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat) hovering around either. And there was definitely no MOMI (Mammal of Maternal Instinct).

I was not in charge of this exercise nor was I a participant in the sense that the students were – they had to pass. I had come along to assist and participate as the situation called for. I was up for the challenge and my boss thought it might good to have a grown up around. We were in the hands of the Costa Rican Coast Guard Academy. It was their show. 

There was rain and then there were stars. The sea was running about a meter, not rough but enough to knock you off the pontoon if you dozed, enough to keep you clenching at the handles if you were in the water, and enough to make people vomit. Vomiting is problematic enough at parties, though I do recall the maxim that if you don’t throw up on your birthday, then you have no friends. But when vomiting starts one hour into a 13 hour ordeal, and there is no drinking water, no means to tell time, no way to control the environment, and no Nutella, well, you know it’s going to be a long night. Many of my students were thin little things, to boot.

It is my understanding that Outward Bound, a global experiential education organization, was inspired by observations from the Battle of the Atlantic in which it was found that youth and fitness alone were not a ticket to survival in a lifeboat, raft, float or any other buoyant artifice in the hours or days after a torpedoed ship slipped beneath waves. Evidently, mental fortitude played a role too, and it was often lacking among the youngest and most physically fit. It was observed that older specimens, while possibly less physically fit, had a higher survival rate. To all you slack, middle-aged farts, don’t get too excited about this. Anyway, the idea with Outward Bound was to simulate experiences that develop mental fortitude and thereby equip people for adversity, which surely comes sooner or later. I believe that this is philosophical underpinning of their motto: “To Serve, to Strive, and Not to Yield.”

So there we were, me and a bunch of students in, on, or near an anchored pontoon in the Pacific Ocean. The bioluminescence in the water was active this night. While the glittering twinkles were delightful to see when swirling off the fingertips, the same shooting star stirrings down in the deep gave me pause: “Whatever happens, I am the ultimate class trip chaperone.” 

It didn’t take long to see that my students were in the grip of exhaustion and apathy from the 4k swim. In consequence, they weren’t doing anything to improve their situation, individually or collectively. The clearest evidence of this was a total lack of communication. They just lay there, sloshing about in the swell like a scene from ‘Titanic’ or some old World War II movie. This is when I learned that it really is possible to sleep in the water while hanging onto something. Amusing as that was to watch, I was concerned by their passivity. Like the proverbial frog who complacently allows himself to be cooked alive in water that increases in temperature so incrementally that the frog does not recognize its doom, there appeared to be something similar going on but in the other direction.

So, I initiated a conversation with 2 or 3 students whom I deemed to have leadership capacity, the idea being that they their shit together. I asked them if they thought they were better off in the water, or out of the water. They said that in the water felt warmer. I asked if they knew what normal body temperature is. They did. I asked them if they knew the temperature of the sea. They did. It was all I could do to not explode at them with “So, which number is lower, you idiots!!!” 

They agreed to try out-of-the-water for awhile. “I think it’s warmer” said one. “Definitely” said another. Before long they had an approximate rotation for getting people out of the water as chill factor required, and back into the water to make space on the float. Some people were weaker than others and needed more time out of the water. Fortunately, some people were stronger than others and were able to stay in the water longer. Above all, they were now talking. After what may have been two hours I began to think we could go the distance intact.

A favorite memory of this night was gazing south and seeing an unfamiliar cluster of stars. I used to know all the stars in all hemispheres on account of voyaging and having sextants on the quarterdeck. I said to myself “What could that thar cluster of stars be? Then it hit me: it was the Southern Cross. You can’t see Polaris from the southern hemisphere but you can see the Southern Cross from the northern hemisphere.

Well, the moon rose and crowded out the stars. The vomiting subsided. By the time a bluish hue outlined the cliffs to the east, two students were shivering uncontrollably – stage 1 hypothermia. But everyone made it through the night, which was immensely satisfying. 

My brother-in-law is a retired Navy SEAL. His training and field experience would make this outing look like child’s play. I also have a close friend, an old shipmate, who spent four and a half days with eight people in a six-man deflated life raft after losing four other shipmates when the Pride of Baltimore sank beneath him. For him this would also look like child’s play. And it was. We had coffee and a hot breakfast in the morning, followed by a nice little nap. 

It is an easy thing to be strong when you are feeling strong, and in control of events. But that sense of well-being may not be actual strength. It may merely be fortunate circumstances. It is much harder to be strong when you are feeling weak, and not at all in control. A night in the ocean will make you feel for those who are struggling most.