Quite a number of us were returning from Antigua race week, a wonderful, once a year event held two islands north of Dominica. We were on John Fleek’s thirty-foot sloop, Intermezzo. Tommy Coulthard was sailing in tandem on his Rita-of-Ross; a factory built fiberglass version of the prize winning Yachting World, ‘Diamond’ design.
We had all been partying the night before so we left English Harbor late for such a leg but arrived at dusk in Deshailes Bay on the northwest coast of Guadeloupe, the French island about thirty miles north of Dominica.
John, in his cups, insulted the little urchins who rowed out to see if there was some scam they could pull on us so we were afraid to leave the boats untended to go ashore for dinner. Our oldest was over the side swimming in the dark water and I did something like humming the background thumping noise from “Jaws” that made him uneasy so he climbed back in the boat.
A drink or two later I, too decided to take a swim beside the boat and eased myself into the black water. I was having second thoughts about what might be under me in the darkness when I was suddenly grabbed in an angry jarring vice-like grip on the lower leg. It was unyielding and unbelievably frightening. With the fuel from about five gallons of adrenaline I imitated the latest launching of a cruise missile from a submarine, rising, so they said, out of the water to a level above the sloop’s deck.
Naturally, it was eldest son, Pete, getting even by using a plastic lined ‘Y’ shaped boathook to simulate the hungry bite of a large shark. It took a stiff drink to get me back to my previous comfort level but, after all, I had started it.