Day One

The plane shuddered as it went across the harbour. I went to full throttle to lift it off the glass of water. It started skimming across the water as I struggled to get it into the air. It was exhilarating. Having a Grumman HU-16 Albatross under your control was one of the best feelings in the world.
Rising to the cruising hight, black clouds smothered the plane. Time stood still, objects started floating around the cockpit. An eerie silence hangs over it all.
BANG!
I slam back into my seat. My vision flickers and I slowly fall into the awaiting dreams. Seconds later I regain consciousness to find the plane in a direct course for the sea. Desperately I try to pull the plane out of its nosedive. Over the loud speaker I say, “This is your captain speaking. I believe I should notify you I NEVER PASSED PILOT TRAINING!!!!!!”
CRASH! BOOM!
The plane jolts violently as it smacks into the water, throwing its passengers everywhere. Packs were floating all around. I noticed my bag floating several metres to my left. I grabbed it and started the hundred metre swim towards the shoreline. I was almost in tears, I had let everyone down, I had almost killed everyone and had most likely severely injured someone.
As I swam back to shore I thought about all the people I could have killed. It was the single longest swim in my life, not because of the distance, but because of what I’d just done.
When I got back all I wanted to do was put some clean clothes on. I noticed that James and Mac were walking down to the water in their undies. A group of people gathered round and Andrew asked them, “What are you doing?”
James replied, “Going for a swim.”
Curious, Josiah, Leon and I went with them. They started swimming purposefully towards the tail of the plane. When we got there Mac took a couple of deep breaths and plunged down towards the submerged door. He swam upwards towards the air bubble at the top of the plane and saw three parachute bags and three backpacks. Mac sees his own pack and plunges down towards the door with it. He swims to the surface and we pull him to the side of the plane. James took a huge breath and dived under. He quickly grabbed a parachute and hurriedly made his way towards the exit. Accidentally he pulled the rip cord and got himself caught in the exit struggling to free himself. We had no idea that James was close to dying until his head popped up out of the water gasping for breath. Leon, fully aware of the danger went down next. He saw Grayson’s pack and took it. He didn’t make the exit on his first attempt but tried again and succeeded. When Leon got out of the plane and into view he looked knackered. Josiah pulled him onto the tail wing for me to look after and dived down himself. He didn’t take long and I was the only one not to take the dive. “If you don’t go down, you’re not getting anything” I was told. And so I dived. I grabbed a parachute and took a Swiss army knife out of Luke’s bag. When I resurfaced Mac and James had gone. Supporting Leon, Josiah and I started swimming back to shore.
By the time I got back to dry land I was exhausted.
I didn’t want to hear from the people asking “what did you get?” Josiah answered, “we got Grayson’s pack, two parachutes and a Swiss army knife.”
Mac and James stepped out of the crowd while Mac said, “It was our idea so we demand 25% of the profit.”
Josiah grudgingly handed over a parachute.
We set up camp, making bivouacs and settling into the first sleep of two long weeks.

Starting the Trip

We spent a week preparing for this trip. The day had finally arrived and there was the buzz of thirty excited kids chatting amongst themselves. Mr. Woody was frantically trying to organise us, but we wanted none of it. But we just wanted to scream our heads off. We packed the bus quickly and carried our noise into the confined area. We finally start the first stage of our towards Kawhia harbour where we are going to stay the night at the local hikers lodge.