Saturday was Walter Szulc Jr.'s first day in a kayak. It was almost his last.
Szulc Jr. was paddling 50 yards off Nauset Beach in Cape Cod last weekend when he noticed a fin sticking up in the water behind him. Without hesitation, Szulc Jr. made a b-line for the beach.
“It all happened so quick and I knew I had to react,” Szulc Jr. told the Boston Globe. “I had a deep swallow, that ‘Oh my God’ moment, then I just paddled.”
In a bizarre coincidence, 3,000 miles away a California kayaker almost met his fate thanks to a great white shark. This man, who has not been identified, was fishing about 65 miles south of San Francisco when a shark swam up and bit the front of his kayak.
The kayaker was thrown into the water, but a group of people on a nearby boat saw the attack and rescued the man. Authorities estimated the shark was between 15 and 18 feet and weighed more than 2,000 pounds.
Check out some video here.
If you live on either coast and were thinking about kayaking this weekend, you might want to break out the surfboard instead.
-- Follow Robbie Levin on Twitter @RobbieLevin.
