I, on the other hand, jumped up on the sandpaper-covered contraption, abrading my knees, over and over and over, until we began to worry if the blood would attract sharks. I did manage to ride it a few feet before the wind seemed to magically change direction and blow the sail back over on me, dunking me in the water and then covering me with twelve square meters of Mylar.

Kathy noticed a red car parked up at the Pink House, and then we saw Dennis the Granadian Gardener waving to us, and we saw he had his son with him. We motioned for them to join us down at the beach and I gladly hauled the torture board out of the water. Dennis and Jamal (his nine-year old son) drove down and took out a couple of big reels of fishing line and some hooks. Dennis carried a baggie with a chicken leg in it for bait. We 1-2-3 heaved! the dinghy into the water (this was much easier with three of us pulling on it) and all four of us piled in and took off.

Now, I may not have mentioned before that the dinghy needs some work. The nose of the boat is completely deflated and flaps in the waves, although the two side pontoons are in great shape and keep the thing safely afloat. The wind and waves were both pretty heavy that day, and there were four of us rather than the usual two, so I worried a bit about...sinking to the bottom. Turns out though, it wasn't really a problem. We did take on a bit more water than usual over the bow, but never once did we have to hold our breath. Nevertheless, Dennis seemed to be a little worried about the whole thing, and he sat in the bottom of the boat and continually baled out water with his cupped hands.

Our first tootling destination was Hurricane Hole. Jamal really wanted to see the sharks over there. Although there was evidence they were still there (large splashes and wakes from their swimming around at the surface), we didn't really see one at first. After a few minutes of floating around the hole, Jamal began splashing his hands over the side of the boat. I jokingly told him to count his fingers if he was going to do that. We were all looking elsewhere when one of the little Lemon Sharks actually went for the boy's fingers! There was a big splash right at the side of the boat. Dennis, Kathy, and I immediately looked around, but it was too late. Poor Jamal only had three fingers left on one hand, and just two on the other. Just kidding. Actually, he saw the shark swimming toward him and jerked his hand up just before the shark broke the surface of the water. He was thrilled, but Dennis suggested we might want to tootle elsewhere.

We took the boat over to the deep, sandy part of South Sound where the visibility went all the way down to the bottom -- about 30 feet deep. Kathy showed Jamal how to put on the face mask and snorkel and put his face in the water and his butt up in the air to approximate a glass-bottomed boat. He loved it. We drifted over a fish pot (a big box-shaped fish trap resting on the bottom) and they saw a big-eyed Squirrelfish in the trap, as well as a few others. Kathy and Jamal would have drifted around out there for the rest of the day with their butts in the air, but Dennis looked at his watch a few times and the boat began to drift back into shallow water. I cranked the little outboard and we took her in after spending the better part of three hours tootling. It took us another hour to break down the torture board, furl the sail, rinse it all off, and re-stow it the way we'd found it.