A Father and Son's "Night Sea Journey"

Posted by Dave Van Mouwerik, 1 March 2017

When I was 23, I discovered what it is to swim; in my fifties I have been swept off my feet by marathon swimming.

My son Kyle has always been my main escort, manning a ten-and-a-half foot surfboard we call the Blue Beast. Three years ago my wife Lisa and I, and our other son, Adam, watched as his life was nearly taken from him, in a slow-moving horror show.

With filmmaker Michelle Aguilar, Kyle and I tried to capture this experience in a short, water-centric video….

A Night Sea Journey from Small Pumpkin Productions on Vimeo.

….A father and son explore the encountering of Self. Life presents herself to them, and through this they learn, in a small way, what it means to be human….

The filmmaker

Michelle has an M.A. in Social Documentation from the University of California, Santa Cruz and has produced numerous non-fiction multimedia projects in cultures and communities across the world. She is currently a Staff Producer at Meridian Hill Pictures in Washington D.C. You can learn more about Michelle and her work here.

Epilogue

To learn more about Kyle’s illness, Guillain-Barré Syndrome, please visit here. Kyle’s illness lasted through much of 2013 and some of 2014. He has recovered; he paddled for me in my 2015 Estero Bay Swim.


©2023 Santa Barbara Channel Swimming Association