SeaZen

There were a few days when there was not much to talk about.  Then there was the day.

It was about yesterday. It started out like a normal day. Everything was good. It was around lunch time, when suddenly dad said that there were some sail boats coming in to Bimini harbor. He had noticed that all of them were moving but one. So, he went to the boat and got the binoculars to have a look. The boat was not moving and dad figured out that it was a ground and not moving off the sandbar. Then, we saw the life raft deploy and dad turned on the radio to see what was up. They had run hard a ground and had panicked. They were calling MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY on the radio. Dad and Steve from Hook went around and they found a skiff that would bring them out to rescue the people in the raft. When they came in only one person had a life jacket on and they had no radio. But the one guy had his file folder. They came in and I, Steve, dad, mom, Emma, Maddie, and Kirsten helped them out of the life raft. They had two dogs Misty (a Chihuahua puppy) and Princess (a middle aged boxer). When the entire hullabaloo was done dad  went with some locals to go get the boat. When they found someone that could tow the boat dad looked to where the boat was, but it was not there.  It had drifted into 3 ft of water and was hard a ground. They put in a whole rescue operation into order. They had a tow boat out there; they had a boat standing by, and a dinghy waiting if a guy fell off the boat a ground. They had people swimming to get on the boat that they were trying to tow.   It was just amazing everyone trying to help and the commotion, the boats getting rocked around, and the one they were trying to save getting destroyed. It was getting boring and nothing was happening. So mom, Emma, Maddie, and I went to look at a steel hulk on the beach. After we did that we went home and I went to hang with the girls. Then we heard on the radio “Steve! Get some dock lines! We need help bringing this boat to the dock!” We went running over to the dock and saw the damage: the solar panels were destroyed; the hull was cracked in many places and she was sinking at the dock. We helped for a while and said our good-byes and went and back to the boat and had dinner with the Henry family. The next day we went to the Shark Lab. It was a slow start to the day and well, I will explain it. I woke up, got breakfast and went back to bed. Finally mom got me up and we went on the Bimini ferry. It was a short ride to South Bimini and we got a bus that was running all over South Bimini. We got on; it was cool. We were riding in a home made bus, in the Bahamas! We got to the Shark lab and every thing was good, but we had to wait a little while. Then we got our tour. It first started out as a tour with pictures of all the sharks they catch. We learned about what sharks are dangerous and which ones are not, good dive points, and the lemon shark population in the Bahamas. Then came the fun parts. We walked out to the back of the lab and walked out to the shark pens. We waded into the water to about my knees. We stood on cinder blocks that were holding the pen down. Our guide Jim climbed into the pen and caught a small lemon shark. Then he showed us the many senses of the shark and he flipped  it over to put it in a type of sedation. Then we got to touch it! It was smooth if you rubbed to its tail, but it was like sand paper if you ran your hand to the head. We went back to the beach and we went back to the parking lot and The kids got to hold a Bimini Boa. It was so gentle and strong. We went home and had dinner with the Henry’s. Yesterday we went conching and our catch was two conchs that we had for dinner. Kirsten and Steve made a special recipe with them.It was so good.  We had stone crab as the main course,too. We had to rock- paper- scissors for the last one. We had Bimini Bread pudding that mom made for dessert.