Title: Off the Record

Author: Samara McDowell

In: Sport 32: Summer 2004

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, December 2004

Part of: Sport

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Guy Fawkes

The sea is glassy, black, bitterly cold. It's a lake canoe, actually, that Jonathan and Riki have pushed out from the Havana yacht into the middle of the Wellington harbour. They swing over fathoms of water; above their heads the fireworks flare, break, multi-coloured points of light pushing outward against the dark, falling in again toward themselves. Jonathan and Riki watch, rocking with the waves. Then, Jonathan, becoming momentarily too comfortable in the medium, stands up; and the canoe capsizes.

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Both of them falling, the warm wrapped fug of their bodies alight with shock, the sea searingly cold and dark, and endless, the way the world feels when you're not playing.

‘We were a long way out,’ Riki says laconically. ‘I think Jonathan thought I was going to drown.’

You can get lost out there. You can mistake the bottom of the sea for the surface. You can swim in the wrong direction.