Sleeping with the Fishes

Sometimes, more often lately, I realize that my life is weird. Not in a bad way, just different. Last week, I had to go 65 ft up the mast of our boat (for the 4^th time) and within 10 minutes, I was down and on a conference call. A rather odd succession of events. But, hey, weird is good, weird is interesting.

Speaking of interesting… Hubs was on night shift as we were entering the Old Bahama Channel. It is quite literally a highway – slower traffic keep right, one lane goes one way, one goes the other. Entering the Old Bahama Channel, for my Atlanta folks, is a little like merging onto 285, in the dark, during rush hour, while it is snowing. As we were entering, a huge freighter came barreling towards us and missed us by about ½ mile (feels a LOT closer than it sounds). The sudden rev of the engine and jerking of the boat jolted me awake. Hubs handled it like a champ. Sidebar – the reason “cuss like a sailor” is a catch phrase is because many things happen that will make you cuss.

We switched off around 4:00 am, which is actually my favorite shift. I get to see the sun rise and the ocean wakes up before me. Feeling rather motivated with the dawn of a new day, I headed down below to straighten up. We are NOT slobs, the farthest thing from it really, but days at sea being tossed around in a washing machine means things get tossed and where they land is where they stay. We have spent very little time in the main salon area of the boat. But we have spent enough time to know if it smelled or not. Since moving on board 6 years ago, I have developed a bit of a personal jihad against anything with a strong odor. My sniffer is intact. I say that, to say this. It smelled down there.

After a few minutes of cleaning and wiping and straightening, I found the source of the smell! Somehow, in a boat with all of the windows closed, we had a fish. A flying fish specifically. Dead and in the floor behind a cooler.

Flying fish are the wildlife that we have seen the most of. They are about 6-8 inches long, are blue/silver in color and can fly a really long way. Like really long. These little guys come up out of the water and glide or fly for probably 200 feet.

Fast forward an hour or two, post sunrise, and another!!! This one was on the deck, which at least can have some sort of explanation. I should have known then it was going to be a long day.