The Channel Hat

And we did it just like that.
When we want something,
We don't want to pay for it.

- Jane’s Addiction

The retro 70’s nylon mesh hat has been the bane of my headwear existence since resurfacing lo these past few years. I remember wearing a black and orange Stihl chainsaw hat to parties in the late 90’s for the pure ridiculousness of the thing.

By no means am I anti-fashion. But as I’ve always told my lawyer, the circumstances for me to actually “rock” one of these things would have to be exceptional.

With a long awaited bump in the south swell and with the surfers tearing their fingernails out over a dire summer of wind-blown monotonous flatness it seems like outrigger canoes may be taking the heat off standup paddlers, at least in the case of the breaks outlying the greater Outrigger/Kaimana Beach area. These things explode off the line up with all the grace and control of a ’67 Cadillac barreling down a groomed ski run. Simple math will tell any monkey that a 30-foot boat dropping in on a 10-foot wave face may result in trauma at the bottom.

Getting caught in a decent set is already like being in a washing machine, but add 200 pounds of composite polymer spiraling out of control and it becomes more like a blender. The experienced will relieve themselves prior to venturing out into a break occupied by one of these things.

The hit came furiously, dashing the white boat and all three occupants in a hellish avalanche of whitewater, paddles and terrified yelping. The woman was held under long enough to come up raving about black leprechauns in the coral heads and pulled the hair out of anyone dumb enough to come near her for the first 20 minutes as the lifeguards viewed the whole horrible episode 250 yards away from the binoculars, laughing smugly at the spectacle of it all undoubtedly stoned and eyeing the jellyfish signs greedily like packrats hording useless mothballs.

The flotsam of the impact zone surged and subsided like the stomach of a great whale making ready to vomit and had the eerie feel of a Cessna water landing gone the way that water landings usually go. I picked up a huge red bucket, looking over a guy treading water naked and gripping a pair paddles with the anesthetized look of a man who has just been raped by a herd of rabid buffalo.

“This your bucket?”

“Hold on to it! I’m making a break for the boat! Can you see it?”

The boat rested comfortably on the reef a good 50 yards in just off the channel where the swimmers make the 200m pull to the new windsock. I offered to take his paddles but he was beyond reason and kicked off into the reef, overshooting the stranded canoe by 100 yards. He was not seen again.

The old steersman made it to the wreckage first coughing up seaweed and swearing incessantly as a waterman on a 14-foot rescue board swooped in to ferry the woman to shore. I fired the red bucket at the old man as another set crested and the waterman shouted at her to lean into the wave. Making it barely over the lip, the wind tore off his camouflage retro Bintang Beer hat. He had time to look back and see me swipe it off the surface as the next wave kicked them toward the beach. The look of exasperation said that this was indeed an integral part of his wardrobe, but the possibility of nailing the distraught woman bit him hard in the instincts and he dug hard for the shore, crossing his fingers that fate would put it back on his head.

Unfortunately, it was a perfect fit. And it goes without saying that as one should never look a gift horse in the mouth, the same goes for someone with my head looking a gift hat in the bill. I lost him somewhere in the mosaic of humanity littering the beach like plastic and knew it was mine. Another clean take, and completely absolved, I marched into the shower like any sun-blackened fool stepping like a camo-crowned stone pimp straight out of 1970.

To celebrate my bravery, I headed to Times Supermarket, the Friday night 6 pack brand decision already handed to me by furious tides of fortune.