Not a bad place to die in your bikini

“If I die tonight,” I tell the captain as I examine the black marks on my throbbing fingers, “here’s who you should call.”

“But who’s going to cook dinner?” he half-jokingly responds.

I jot down my mom’s cell phone number and hope that she won’t be getting a call later that night. “So um, Jennifer’s mom? Yeah, well, she was snorkeling with guests and now her hand is the size of a basketball and she’s speaking in tongues and we’re not sure if she’s gonna…” and that is when the satellite phone connection goes out and he doesn’t even have the chance to say to which remote Grenadine island I’ve been transported. Hopefully one without chickens running through the corridors (I’ve already been to that Caribbean hospital. Actually two. Don’t get me wrong, I love chickens but they are birds. Dirty, stinking birds.)

I flip through the cruising guide to find the “Dangers of the Sea” section. I scan for scorpion and rock fish and poisonous eels and other deadly creatures. The pain is now intense and I can’t bend my middle finger.

The guests were in the dinghy after a fairly unsuccessful late afternoon snorkeling session. The chop was well, choppy, the current sweeping around the rocky island was intense, the light that would have illuminated the mostly dead coral and small schools of fish was dipping towards the horizon. They persuaded me to jump in just for a looksee. I can never pass up a chance to jump in (that’s not true- only applied to clear, clean, warm water) so I did. Parrot fish and sergeant majors dipped and dived in front of my fogging half mask. The current wasn’t so bad with my big fins, but I knew I should get back to the boat with the guests before the sun set any more. I flipped myself up into the dinghy and we prepared to pull up the anchor. The anchor was not cooperating. The anchor is stuck in a coral head. Back into the water I go, breathing hard three times before diving down to the bottom pulling myself with the anchor line. That’s when my ears needed to be cleared and my mask started filling with water. Squeezy pop go my ears with a little nose holding maneuver and I just ignore the mask. I see that the chain has worked its way into a crevice where the anchor is now lodged. No prob. In goes my hand to pull down the anchor. Fuck. Electric points of pain shoot up my arm. This is not good I think but stick my hand back into the crevice anyway. Stupid but instinctual (in a weird way) as I am running out of breath and pulling the anchor out seems essential to my survival.

Free. I kick to the surface with the splayed anchor and hand it to one of the guests. We are now drifting in the current and I kick up into the dinghy to start the outboard. Blood is working its way into the salty crevices of my knuckles and I try not to look concerned as I try to bend my fingers and notice the black marks.

It is one of those moments that may not be as dramatic as, say, the moment after jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge or the moment before impact in a possibly fatal car crash (I’ve experienced the weird slow motion clicky filminess of the latter), but on that dinghy, I started wondering if I was going to die. There are things in the ocean that can kill you and I might have just stuck my hand into one of those thing’s home. Fuck.

I think of whom I should call if I start to go downhill.

I think of things I’ve done.

I wonder if this job was worth it.

I wonder if it’s such a bad way to go? Bathing suit on and smelling of the sea…

Sea Urchins hurt. In this case, it was not deadly, but it hurt for a few hours. Luckily I was cooking for guests and was too distracted to remember the pain or to return my hand to the vinegary solution that was supposed to help dissolve the miniscule spiky tips lodged in my knuckles.

The next day, the black marks were barely there. I was actually kind of hoping they would stay as a little tattoo reminder of my run in with a creature of the deep in the Tabago Cays, the deserted islands of the Grenadines, West Indies.

And a reminder that the next time, hey, it could be a man eating lobster lurking in a coral crevice. Or a bus on a Bequian street. Or fifty years from now as I’m single-handing around the world and I lower my wrinkled butt over the aft rail to pee and oops- shark food.

Point is, those little moments of Shit I could’ve died! are awesome as they give us the chance to re-evaluate ourselves, our relationships, our lives.

Truth is, I'm glad I'm still here and didn't die in my bikini that night.
The captain and guests are pretty glad too- I mean really, who would have cooked the pasta and baked cookies? (And made the beds and retrieved drinks and...)