By Luke Sauer
More often than not, I am writing about putting our gear into some perilous situation. Whether we are perched on the side of a sheer cliff or standing knee-deep in a surging ocean, it seems I'm always more concerned about the fate of our equipment than I am about my own. This was certainly true shooting Meg Teeth in Florida.
We had been diving our first shoot day and had beautiful weather. Moving to Florida's interior, we planned to shoot on the Peace River for the next two days with our guide, Mark Renz. The weather began to change the moment we started inland from the coast. We had been treated to a spectacular lightning and rainstorm the night before, but hoped that the bulk of the rain had passed. We got to the river and raindrops began to fall as soon as we pulled out the cameras. Eeking out a few beauties, we decided to call it quits for the day and hope for the best the next morning.
Waking up, it was beautiful outside. The sky was bright blue and it was warm, not a cloud to be seen. We met up with Mark and, boarding kayaks, started downriver to our hunt location for the day. The Peace River is pretty amazing, and it was a nice float especially considering that Steven, our other cameraman, was manning the paddle leaving me to enjoy the scenery.
The hunt went well. We found a host of shark teeth fragments and other cool fossils for our collection. But after a couple of hours in the water, Mark suddenly called out that we needed to get in the kayaks and head for the cars. He pointed up to a swirling mass of dark and ominous clouds closing in on our once bluebird day. We had bought several dry bags and a bunch of heavy-duty trash bags just in case, so as everyone else loaded into their boats, we frantically packed our gear into anything waterproof we could find. We only had two of the vinyl dry bags, so I was relegated to stuffing my camera into two large garbage bags and hoping that everything would stay dry. Hopping into the kayak, I put one camera between my legs and one on my lap and leaning over, tried my best to provide some shelter for the $100 k of electronics I had in front of me. So not only did I have to worry about tipping over in what was anything but a stable boat, I now had to worry about the possibility of taking my beautiful HD camera out of a water balloon.
And then came the lightning. It wasn't lightning that was far off in the distance, noooo, it was lighting that was striking right above us. Every time I tried to count the interval between seeing a strike and hearing the associated thunderclap, I couldn¿t even begin to count. The storm was right over us. It was completely spectacular but totally frightening at the same time. I can't say that I have been that exposed in such a powerful storm before. I was hoping that with the paddle in Steven's hands, he would get hit before I would! (Just kidding, Buck!)
Soaking wet, we finally made it back to the car. The rain was completely torrential and shoving the gear into the back hatch and turning the heater on full blast, we jumped in to dry off. We got back to our hotel and as we pulled up to the front, the rain just turned off and blue skies started to peek through the heavy clouds. Pulling the camera from the back of the car, I had my fingers crossed that my double bagging job had done the trick. I half expected that as I cut the ties open, a flood of water would empty from the inside. But opening everything up, I was relieved to see that all was bone-dry. The camera was fine, and we came out unscathed from the barrage of rain and lightning. Overall a good day!
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