The Sinking Kayak by Lily Loewen

I'm really not creative at all, so I'm just going to write about a story from spring break last year. Last spring, my mom, dad, aunt, uncle, and 2 cousins, Jack and Elle, and I went to Florida for spring break. We stayed in Estero, Florida, but for a few days we took the ferry to Key West and spent some time at my uncle's cousin's place. There were jet skis, kayaks, and paddle boards there that we could use on the lagoon that went into the bay, which his house was on.  So Elle, Jack, my aunt, and I decided to go kayaking in the lagoon and then try to snorkel in the bay. Elle and I were on one kayak and then my aunt and Jack each had their own. We didn't realize it at first, but it turned out that the bay was sort of shallow, and there wasn't much to look at to snorkel. But Elle and I just laid on our stomachs on the kayak to "snorkel". I got tired of just looking at nothing in the water so I got up, opened the lid to the kayak that has the compartment for our things, and put my snorkel set in there. As I was doing this, Elle also got up, and our kayak flipped over. At first we were trying to gather everything that fell out of the compartment, until we looked down and our kayak had sunk to the bottom of the four foot deep bay.

Elle and I tried to lift the kayak out of the water, but there was water throughout the entire thing, and it was impossible. My aunt was freaking out, and calling our dads so that they can come out and help us lift the kayak and empty, but there was still a big problem. We lost the lid to the kayak so even if we did empty the kayak, if someone tried kayaking it would just fill up and sink again. Eventually our dads got to the scene on kayaks, in the middle of the bay, and saw Elle and I hopelessly trying to drag the kayak nearer to the shore. Contrary to my aunt, our dads thought that it was hilarious. After they stopped making fun of us they lifted the kayak and started emptying it out. It literally took fifteen minutes to empty the entire kayak. So after the kayak was hollow again, my uncle wanted to try to find the lid because if we didn't then we would have to pay his cousin back for destroying one of his kayaks. So we tried to find the lid, but of course we didn't because we were in the middle of the bay trying to find a little, flat plastic lid. After about twenty minutes of searching the water we decided to kayak home. Although our parents had to pay for a kayak, which is very expensive, this was certainly a memory we would never forget.