BVI &c.
“There will be tarpon under there,” our captain said as we motored the dingy from the 45-foot catamaran where we’d been living the past two days to the shallow, tide-washed waters off Monkey Point. “They’re huge, and they’ll freak you out at first, but realize they’re just after the minnows.”
I was busy trying to figure out my snorkel, perched on the dingy’s gray-rubber side like a Navy SEAL, if Navy SEALs were lanky white boys in blue swim-trunks whose primary mission, instead of strapping C-4 to enemy hulls, consisted of tooling around the British Virgin Islands for a magazine story.
We stopped at the spot; the dingy tied to a moss-covered rope extending from the white buoy down into the deep. I worked on my breathing, sucked tube, and plunged overboard. Opened my eyes to a cloudy sea swirling with motes of vegetation, and a deep dark seafloor breaking apart into schools of tiny fish, and…
Shark!
Four foot silvery beasties gliding on long fins over the ragged topography of coil, fast and intent on the hunt, ready to feast and draw blood with their tiny…
…their itty-bitty…
…snouts?
Not shark!
“Tarpon,” I say to my diving companion, and point; but through the snorkel bit it comes out something like, “Mrph-Ughn.” Not that she can hear anyway.
Being out on the boat is something of a relief, after our time on the island went so disastrously wrong. With most trips, you have an itinerary, studiously prepared by some PR agency; but in this case, it had been left to some representative of the BVI who proceeded to, well, not plan a damn thing. And then tell us everything was okay. Leaving my fellow reporter and I, accompanied by a driver, to motor in useless circuits around the island for a day and a half until we could persuade our catamaran captain to cast off for the second part of the trip.
We did, however, have the opportunity to crash the governor’s mansion for some sort of boating party, pulling up to the front in a battered van; those waiting in the receiving line on the front steps seemed slightly nonplussed at us blasting Jay-Z at excessive volume. Both reporters sprawled in the vehicle, decked out in plane-rumpled finery yet eating take-out conch fritters out of cartons.
Never Get Into A Small Plane Piloted By A Celebrity
Seriously, though, Craig Ferguson is a hell of a pilot. And L.A. is a seriously scary part of the country to fly over in a tiny four-seater Cessa 400, what with all the other small planes flying past like TIE fighters at the end of ‘Star Wars.’
28! Aaagh!
Turned 28. No major existential issues. Aside from not publishing a novel, everything went pretty well, all told.
I was busy trying to figure out my snorkel, perched on the dingy’s gray-rubber side like a Navy SEAL, if Navy SEALs were lanky white boys in blue swim-trunks whose primary mission, instead of strapping C-4 to enemy hulls, consisted of tooling around the British Virgin Islands for a magazine story.
We stopped at the spot; the dingy tied to a moss-covered rope extending from the white buoy down into the deep. I worked on my breathing, sucked tube, and plunged overboard. Opened my eyes to a cloudy sea swirling with motes of vegetation, and a deep dark seafloor breaking apart into schools of tiny fish, and…
Shark!
Four foot silvery beasties gliding on long fins over the ragged topography of coil, fast and intent on the hunt, ready to feast and draw blood with their tiny…
…their itty-bitty…
…snouts?
Not shark!
“Tarpon,” I say to my diving companion, and point; but through the snorkel bit it comes out something like, “Mrph-Ughn.” Not that she can hear anyway.
Being out on the boat is something of a relief, after our time on the island went so disastrously wrong. With most trips, you have an itinerary, studiously prepared by some PR agency; but in this case, it had been left to some representative of the BVI who proceeded to, well, not plan a damn thing. And then tell us everything was okay. Leaving my fellow reporter and I, accompanied by a driver, to motor in useless circuits around the island for a day and a half until we could persuade our catamaran captain to cast off for the second part of the trip.
We did, however, have the opportunity to crash the governor’s mansion for some sort of boating party, pulling up to the front in a battered van; those waiting in the receiving line on the front steps seemed slightly nonplussed at us blasting Jay-Z at excessive volume. Both reporters sprawled in the vehicle, decked out in plane-rumpled finery yet eating take-out conch fritters out of cartons.
Never Get Into A Small Plane Piloted By A Celebrity
Seriously, though, Craig Ferguson is a hell of a pilot. And L.A. is a seriously scary part of the country to fly over in a tiny four-seater Cessa 400, what with all the other small planes flying past like TIE fighters at the end of ‘Star Wars.’
28! Aaagh!
Turned 28. No major existential issues. Aside from not publishing a novel, everything went pretty well, all told.
posted by NiK @ 9:23 AM
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