Envision for a moment a scene from your dream of cruising on a sailboat: anchored off a lovely beach, beautiful vista of open water and other islands off the port bow, the gentlest of breezes lightly ruffling the water between you and another graceful classic ketch. Are you in that moment? Can you feel your hand reach for the cold fruit and rum concoction? Now relive it with me... the sound isn't Jimmy Buffet exactly, and the orange-ish thing in the drink holder seems to have become some little stuffed animal instead of a cocktail. It's a little simulation of a feral cat of some sort and it's called Peeky, or Sneaky or Streaky or something and you never get it right and all the various children shout from all their various crouching spots aboard the boat the correct animal name in shrill and reproachfully offended voices, and its sounds pretty much like what you just called it, and what freaking ever anyway, it isn't your drink, and it isn't easy to hear, and is all that pain in your forehead from the roar in your ears? The sound is not the kids so much, not even really the torrential mid August deluge of rain pounding against the water, the deck, and especially the increasingly leaky enclosed cockpit canvas, but it's that other roar, ROAR, really, that is coming from the open upper deck of a power boat 50 yards away, that has an air cooled, and apparently absolutely unmufflered non-marine John Deere generator the size of a small sedan running for (I'm not kidding here) its 6th straight hour while producing what judging by engine size and decibel range must be 150,000 watts of electricity. More power than every boat in Shallow Bay could use all together in 48 hours. The boat did not have its name on the transom or I would post it here and every where else. Anything other than a family of ten below his deck all in iron lung machines and the old guy really ought to get spear gunned, because he obviously does not have his hearing aids in and thinks the vibration in his hull is coming from gawd knows what (a Geritol and Viagra smoothie whipped up in his 200 gallon AC commercial blender?). And you are playing Snakes and Ladders (a game invented by Spanish Inquisitors 500 years ago to destroy the life spirit of any possible heretics that had been left unbowed by the rack) with a crazed Super Competitor 7 year old boy on a tiny eye-scrunching magnetic travel set, with a single die half the size of your smallest fingernail, and no matter how many times either of you get within a few rolls of the agony ending finish of the game, it's always another trip back down the really long snake and then another short one, which absolutely delights the boy (and add a heaping of guilt to how you feel because the kid thinks this is special time with his Dad, and you only feel like you are being burned alive) and there you are right back to the very beginning of the interminable game, and you realize that you had drifted off in a reverie, a dream of cruising on a sailboat and how great it would be, while you were actually aboard one already!
Seconds from a stroke (massive, cerebral cortex), events change, and you get an entirely different stroke (of luck, one). It is an avalanche of happiness. The Snakes and Ladders game gets kicked over, and my son Tommy replaces the pieces and his already large lead has somehow increased and he wins. It's over. The generator of M/V Torquemada shuts off with a whimper and a soft click. The silence is sublime. Birds, wavelets, the paddle of a kayak paddle dipping in the water, all delicately punctuate the quiet. Appetizers and wine magically appear as my teeth stop grinding. The San Juan Islands no longer resemble a geographic root canal, and right on cue the rain gives way to a soft milky sky.
The children and I read stories together, and we forget all about ESPN and Tom and Jerry like back at the dirt dwelling. Carla bakes a blueberry pie instead of exchanging emails with other Mom's while simultaneously talking with them on the phone. Hold everything, it is special time. The dream of cruising is made real in the snap of your fingers; the promise of what it can mean to the richness of the short span of your life, and to your relationships to those few people who mean pretty much, everything, to you. You don't have to hide from the national debt, the tanking economy, the value of your mortgage resting on quicksand, job disasters or the fact that the only news you can really trust comes from comedy shows. In a moment you remember that those problems only apply to you, because you let them. To be honest, we stand in line and borrow money to have this misery, because everyone else around us is doing it. Out on the water we can glimpse what amazing wonders our children are, and feel courageous enough to consider what kind of life we really want to offer them. Our schools are cobbling together bits and pieces of classes and programs and literally sending home notes to parents saying that the point of education and being a good student is that they can go to college and get a job serving a corporation some day. Socrates, Benjamin Franklin, and Karl Marx all must be spinning in their graves. What sort of fodder do you want your children to be? What company logo do you want on your grave stone? Quick, go watch a sitcom or some science fiction, visit a glitzy website, something, until the urge to look around goes away. What ever you do, don't go sailing.

The next morning after leisurely coffee, breakfast, and reading, but before the 200 decibels of AC fury got going; we headed off in the dinghy for one of the beaches. We had water, books, and a back pack full of string cheese. The amount of string cheese aboard the Dawn Treader is enough to lower her waterline a full inch at the start of an outing. I have no explanation for it, other than Carla may be trying to balance the weight of all the wine I pack aboard. The new outboard has been making all the difference on trips this summer. Zip to shore, forget something, and zip back. Rowing is now only to entertain and exercise the children. This morning the kids needed to be run like a pack of cooped up Irish Setters. I knew this because Tommy and Cavan had both said, 'Dad, we need to run!' I'm good at picking up on my children's needs like that.
The boys ran. The girl ran. Carla and I sat on a log. The kids wanted to be timed. They ran timed back and forth wind sprints. They raced each other. There were obstacles and staggered starts. My wife, the planet's most competitive person, wondered why everything had to be a competition with our children, and inferred I might be to blame. As I suppose she predicted, there were eventually some tears for the losers and egregious celebrations for the winners. Carla went back to the boat for something and I realized she might not return for hours. To keep the children happy, I had them switch their sprinting to a team relay race. This was during the second week of the Olympics after all. This was also very funny. A 30 second back and forth run with two handoffs and a rotating order. The handoff would be to the wrong person, or the new runner would take off in the opposite direction, or would leave so early that it would turn into a distance race just to catch them for the tag. The kids gasped and sweated and celebrated while I sat and watched and laughed. Other parents, whose children merely dug holes in the sand, or looked at the scenery, eyed our hyperactive brood, mmm, quizzically.
Kaaaarannng!!!! The generator from hell fired up on the far side of the bay. Each new boat entering the bay would send an emissary dinghy over to the power boat, but the old guy never came outside while the motor was running (it may have been too loud?), and he might have been blind as well as deaf. When the would-be complainers began to bleed out of their ears, they would circle back to their boats defeated. The sound wasn't a problem on the beach; it was kind of like the familiar roar coming from breakers just around a nearby point. Kind of. We went for a walk on the beach, which turned into a hike on a trail. It was lovely; though walking along cliff faces with three children is not always relaxing, per se (per se being Latin for always ready to grab for their collar). We kept going and going and then more going. The going was starting to seem like maybe too much wenting. At a certain point, we began to wonder if the path went three or four miles to the other end of the island. The walk back from there would be, well, equally long. We were literally within seconds of turning and walking all the way back, when we went up one more rise and found the path rejoined the main walk and we were returned to the beach in a couple minutes; log sitting, drinking water and eating string cheese.

Our previous week plus out on the boat in July involved way too much moving around, this time we decided to stay put. Except for the Legion of Doom wannabe, Generator-man (or maybe just Gen-aray-Tor!), this was a very good plan. We hiked different trails on Sucia every day, hit different beaches, and spent time breathing the still air instead of motoring expensively thru it. We had been a few days late getting away. Firstly, because of some fine tuning on the repair of the water muffler (I won't bore the non-total boat geek with details, other than to say an old weld began failing as soon as we got to the San Juan Island that was the farthest away from our dock on our previous outing, and it began dripping increasingly large amounts of corrosive hot salt water in the engine room, requiring me to hang a series of gallon jugs from wires to catch the mess and then having to empty them every hour by the end of the last day) which leaked from one end of the repaired exhaust pipe at the one gasket I hadn't replaced (because I couldn't find one), but it all came right when I cut a new one from hi-temp gasket material using the remains of the old one as a pattern (the high point being when Carla walked by as I was carefully razor-blading out the new gasket and she asked, "And what would make you think you would know how to fix something like that?" before wandering off to presumably forehand volley something or other) and the only concern on restarting the motor was the total lack of smoke. 'Can that be right?' I said doubtfully to myself.
The next hold up was the weather. Really not the weather but the marine weather forecast. High wind warnings and even a gale warning. Right after one of those reports and just as we were set to back out of the slip, the wind did start gusting hard around 25-30 knots dead from the direction we would be heading. Prudent old mariner that I am, I decided to not head out into a gale warning with my wife, three children and a cat. We did other things and watched the wind die and not come back. Finally we determined that the warnings, which kept coming every day, were meant for a person named Gayle, and they were merely warning her to bring lots of fuel because they were high, and couldn't find any wind. It never stopped being glassy, and I'm trying to not let this be a lesson to be more imprudent in the future.

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The salon of the boat was suddenly (and uniquely) quiet, as everyone stared at me. Not the usual way they stare at me: 'What have you done/broken/said/drank/eaten this time?' They (a father {not me}, two sons {not mine}, wife and three children {okay those were mine}) appeared surprised and impressed.
'You did all this last night?' Alec oldest of the five kids of either father asked. 'While we slept? I never head a thing. You were like a Ninja.'
'El Gato Negro' his father, the notorious Ed agreed.
'Yes,' I had to agree, 'like a Ninja, with an oar. Of course le chat noir was only out on the prowl because his wife made him get up out of bed because it was getting too noisy for her to sleep. But don't kid yourselves, that probably happened plenty with old-time Ninja's too.'
Here is the thing, Carla and I had only returned the previous week from nine days on the water where nothing had broken!* In our giddiness, we had invited Ed and his sons Andy and Alec over for a weekend sail. It would be his boys' first sailing trip on salt water. They came up from Seattle Friday night and we all played and ate too much and got off to our typically slow start the next day. By the time the boat was loaded (with enough food and drink to keep us for a month), and we were finally ready to depart for the fuel dock, it was noon. The skipper deftly handled the old barge in the tight and slightly breezy conditions, only to have the two line handlers, Carla and Ed, high five to congratulate themselves for the success of the maneuvers. I tried to argue the point briefly as we waited for the attendant to show up, but, in a word, lost.
A remarkable thing happened as we left the marina and snaked our way out of Drayton harbor: the wind blew. The tide was a big heavy flood (against of course), but there was wind. And it was sailing wind, not just the Semiahmoo gusty land breeze that smacks you on the beam right as you're docking after a day of motoring on a glossy Strait of Georgia. Up went mizzen, main, and jenny. Off went the motor as we sailed close hauled on a starboard tack headed west. A sailboat race began on the Canadian side, and our speed seemed pretty good in comparison. Our deck was certainly a lot more level than all the racers with their legs hanging over the side. Ed brought out a huge bag of sunflower seeds.** I mostly only write about problems so I don't have too much to say about the sailing, other than I was very happy. After an hour or two, Carla did point out that Sucia was 90 degrees to the course we were sailing and did I have any reason for not pointing that way. I mumbled nautically about current and set, until she threatened to get the chart out, at which time I buckled and steered the boat off to a beam reach just for the speed of it, and then finally ran full with the wave chop rocking away at us. We were under full canvas (there is a mizzen staysail tucked away somewhere...) with a dry sunny deck. We watched another boat headed the same way under jib alone, her crew in their yellow foulies all huddled and tucked in the cockpit, while aboard the Dawn Treader, Ed napped dry on the foredeck. The only time I heard from the crew was when they complained that their lounging spot was taken out of the sunshine by a (totally unavoidable) bit of yawing. We took the great circle route to Sucia and the boat performed great. Some real wind for a change with white caps in bright sunshine. What a boat it will be in the trade winds.
Andrew, at 8, was quite worried about the sailing trip beforehand, and we had done what we could to put him at ease. You never know though, and as it turned out, the boy was a natural pirate. While some of the crew yawned and blinked in the bouncy wind chop, Andy was climbing, prowling, leaning, exploring, watching the water and asking good questions. It was great to see. His father of course was a just great lump on the deck (occasionally dribbling a sunflower shell out of his mouth were it would be blown into sea cocks, bilge pumps, electronics, etc), but what are you going to do? He did bring a ton of shrimp, beer, and wine, so he really could lay about all he wanted. It's not like I was going to give up the helm in any case. Andrew was good company anyway.
The only problem with turning a 14 mile trip into a 24 mile joy ride, is that you get in later, and we already left late, which gave us little day light now that it was getting all autumnal-ish. What little time we did have was largely squandered by the Admiral/First mate having us poke our nose into every bay to look once again for a mythical open moorage buoy. In her defense, it did happen once at Reid Harbor, that we pulled foolishly into the head of the bay on a weekend at her insistence, only to have someone right off the beach leave their mooring immediately upon our approach. That miracle occurrence will haunt me for eternity.*** So we wander around the various little coves before finally heading back to Echo Bay. The plan had been to anchor, but I'm picky about anchoring, and don't like to drop the hook and fly off the boat. So we (maybe it was me) came up with the idea to try the weird yellow rope mooring raft/station contraption. This allowed us to tie up fairly quickly, and get the dinghy launched. The bad part about the wyrmr/sc was that it was way out from the beach.
We were thus left a long row, upwind, in the dinghy loaded with hyperactive kids. It really left two long rows, because it didn't look like the entire shore party could fit in the boat at the same time. We needed to get to land; kids, like dogs, need to be run. It was an interesting problem, a bit like the Becket sucking stone passages (for those who know their Irish literature and you all should) in all its possible permutations toward a desired end. How best to get five kids and two adults ashore? Carla had decided to handle dinner preparations and stay on the boat. Before you give her the Nobel Prize for self sacrifice, it should be noted that she was staying aboard, and was insisting that everyone else go ashore, whether they wanted to or not. It was less falling on the grenade, than it was, well, something similar to me bravely missing church to change a few light bulbs while watching the football game. [I may have digressed.] One adult and four children could make it, but then someone had to bring the boat back, without abandoning the children on the island to a Lord of the Flies in fifteen minutes or less scenario. That meant two adults had to go on the initial trip. One adult rowing the long way against the wind with a full boat, then dropping off three children and an adult, before rowing back to pick up two more children and then rowing a laden boat across the bay again, would have been way too much. One adult rowing the laden boat then getting out with the kids and leaving the previous passenger adult to row back and reload and then re-row back was better, but still asking a lot considering the return voyages would be nearly as burdensome. My brilliant solution***** was to have Ed, Carla, and the three smallest children row ashore, and then Carla could bring the boat back and I would take the remaining kids, thus getting everyone ashore with Ed and I only having had to row the windward distance once each. ******Carla agreed to any plan that would get her a few hours peace.
When I did reach the shore on the second trip, children were scattered about everywhere, as one of my offspring had needed to do an emergency poop. As one or all of them have done everyday they have ever even visited the boat. The Diarrheic Treader might be a more apt name for our vessel. Ed, who had not been to Sucia in many years, took Tommy's advice on where the nearest outhouse was located.**** Eventually all the various lemmings were rounded up and we had a nice hike to the other side of the island, took the hilly way back, and even managed to give the boys a little treasured rock throwing time. It was getting very dusky however, and we decided to load everyone (heavily life jacketed), all into one downwind dinghy ride. Not a lot of freeboard remained, but catamaran boats are wonderful things (I'll admit we looked like albino Cuban boat people and may have had a photo or two snapped of us as we wallowed past other boats), and we got (more or less) safely back in time to begin gorging and gulping again just at dark fall. Ate and drank, ate and drank, and ate and drank. Tommy and Cavan went to bed in the V-berth forward, Ed took the salon bed, Sophia slept in the aft stateroom with Carla and me, and Andrew and Alec slept in the enclosed cockpit.
At some point in the middle of the night the wind came up quite strong and caused the boat to change its position against the large yellow polypro lines she was moored to. This in turn caused one of the hard fender floats on the wyrmr/sc to begin thrumming and then bongo-ing against the side of the boat. If you think of the shape of a conga drum, and then think of a sailboat hull, you will picture pretty much the same thing, focused amplification. Boats taking waves fore or aft make a whoosh splash, whoosh splash, sort of sound as they slice the water, but waves hitting the side of the hull say bong, bong, well, more than a college freshman. And big rock hard stupid scratch your boat float balls attached to goofy mooring systems make that sound too, only more staccato and irritating. Finally the admiral had had enough and decided to do something about it.
'What is that?' she said, shaking me. 'It doesn't matter. Go make it stop.'
Even in the middle of the night, at that point midway between climbing into bed all warm and glowing from good wine, and waking in the morning sternly wondering why anyone in the world would not have a cup of coffee ready to hand you, I knew it was no time for a mutiny, and got out of the warm sheets. I found my glasses and a flashlight in the dark without managing to step on Sophia who was sleeping on cushions on the floor, and crawled into the cockpit. The wind waves were lit by the full moon and the stars. We were so far from the beach that there was enough fetch to kick them up to a about a foot high. No one else aboard seemed to be awake. The sound of the banging was much quieter in the cockpit. The epicenter of the sound must have been just on the other side of the hull from where we had been trying to sleep. Undoing the clasps that held the canvas enclosure shut, I climbed carefully over Alec in his sleeping bag, and out onto the deck. It was a cold north wind blowing thru me knickers, I'll tell you, and I immediately wished I'd bothered to throw on a pair of sweat pants. It seemed a bit risky in my current tired state, to step back over the two kids any more times than absolutely necessary.
I went forward around the front of the main mast and assessed the situation. The wind was pinning our hull hard against the ropes of the mooring station. The furthest forward and furthest aft of our boat fenders had been pushed down below the lowest horizontal mooring line and no longer cushioned the hull from the hard floats that looked like they were soft, but were not. These floats were rock hard plastic, each about the size of a soccer ball. They were not only making the bongo sounds, they were grinding away at the hull as well. The Dawn Treader had too much high freeboard exposed to the wind hitting our starboard bow to allow me to push the hull away enough to raise the fenders by hand. I needed something to pry with, and the boat hook would have ended up bent and useless. An oar would do the job, but they were still in the dinghy, which bounced jauntily at the end of its painter in the light chop a few yards just aft of the mother ship. I retraced my way back around the mast and stepped over the lifelines.
The wooden boarding ladder had its lowest step submerged in the water, so it was easy to know when I was at the bottom. The water was cold, the waves splashing a bit, and the breeze through the boxers wasn't getting any more tropical. A sangre fria (as Truman Capote used to say), I hung outboard with one hand, and pulled the line to get the dinghy behind and below me enough to grab it with one foot. It was just then as I hung from the boat with one hand and one foot, and prepared to drop my weight into the pitching dinghy, that it would not work out well to fall in the water. The headline: Drowned sailor washes up on shore at Patos Island in his underpants; friends can't stop laughing. So I dropped into the dinghy and used some caution in reaching an oar up to the boat, before climbing back up the ladder.
Armed with my big lever it was a fairly easy job to pry the hull from the mooring island, and get the boat fenders to the proper height. The sound of banging and grinding gave way to the gentle sound of waves lapping against the bow. Muuuuch better!
I climbed back over the various sleeping kids and made it to the aft head where I spritzed the salt off my hands, feet, and face, before climbing back into the sublime wonder of a warm bed. Carla woke briefly, and said, 'I can't believe you actually fixed it.' Then she was asleep again. I thought about counting just how many bad ways there could be to take that, but decided to just fall asleep again instead. It wasn't until the next morning, during what turned out to be a series of breakfasts that Carla asked the assembled crew how they had managed to sleep with all that racket. 'Noise,' they said. "What noise?'


* Readers of our previous Gulf Islands misadventures are permitted to gasp here.

** I will be finding sunflower shells in various places on the boat now for eternity.

*** Okay there might have been another time outside Friday Harbor, but don't quibble with me.

**** Readers who know Tommy are permitted to gasp here.

***** Get an outboard motor? I know, I know.

****** And a bigger dinghy? I SAID I KNOW!

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Despite the late ending to the previous night's boat party at the marina in Fisherman's Bay on Lopez Island, Carla's mom, Marge, was at the dock bright and early the next morning with her clothes bag and some more fresh food and ice. We needed to be away from the dock by 8:30 am to have any chance of getting out of the narrow and shallow channel that separates the bay from the deep water of the straight that runs between Lopez and Shaw Island. As it was, our boat draws 4'10" and the depth sounder read 4.10 feet at one tense moment on the way out. The only problem once in open water was figuring out where, now that we had our celebrated guest on board, we were going to take her.
'Where were we going to go next?' one of the kids asked. 'Does it have a pool?'
'No pool. You were in a pool yesterday, so you don't need to be clean again for the rest of the week.'
There wasn't much wind, a big southerly heading ebb tide and plenty of sun. Carla wanted to go to Stuart Island, which is the northern most of the San Juan Islands and we were at Lopez, the southern most island. That would mean a long day of slow motoring with a bunch of children who were dying to stop somewhere and fish. I clawed frantically at charts and guide books trying to formulate the ever elusive back up plan. I suggested Canoe Island (too close). I suggested Blind Bay on Shaw Island (no beach). I suggested the much closer (but not too close) West Sound on Orcas Island. Marge sagely declined to get involved with the choosing, and simply expressed that she was happy/thrilled to be out on the water on such a perfect sunny day. Carla and I had no time to waste on good weather appreciation. She made her pitch to the kids on the virtues of Stuart Island (trails, a lighthouse, perhaps a whale would come by, something good might come of it somehow...) finally sort of waving feebly at a closed guide book as if to infer the kids could look it up for themselves if they had any doubts. They gave her the same sort of distrustful stare they do every time she tries to convince them that fresh fruit counts as a dessert.
I took my turn. 'Alright my little pirates, what would you rather do? We can go to Stuart Island, which might be nice, but we don't know because we've never been there, and which will take us a long long time. Or we could go anchor at a place called...' I paused dramatically and then whispered it to Sophia, and her eyes lit up. 'Tell 'em where pirates can anchor,' I told her. In her best 4 year old cutthroat voice she whispered, 'Skull Island!' They looked at me, and I nodded. 'For real. Skull Island in Massacre Bay.' There was much rejoicing amongst the shorter crew members. Carla looked at the sky, perhaps searching for a cloud that was whale shaped. I gave Marge the wheel and told her to keep Shaw to her left. I sat down and had another cup of coffee; my mornings work having been finished.

I had anchored at Skull Island about two decades ago, soon after getting my first boat. It was a great spot then, except for my backing over my dinghy line and breaking my shaft coupling. I have had an aversion to towing dinghies ever since. Unlike the urban sprawl of Deer Harbor, Massacre Bay was still just as lovely. At the far top end of the long West Sound, the water was glassy and clear. Seals circled the boat discretely. Skull Island has one small sandy beach to land a dinghy on, and we anchored a few boat lengths away from it.
The six of us piled into the dinghy and we rowed ashore. I tried to row in a straight line after Sophia's remark from a few days before in Shallow Bay, 'Dad, you're not towardsing at our boat!' The Livingston was a little overloaded with all of us aboard, and I accidentally splashed Carla on one oar stroke. She responded by putting her hand in the water and flinging some at me. The children now believe this to be acceptable behavior. Skull Island is an undeveloped state park, which for an island, is far and away my favorite kind. We spent hours looking at the different views, wandering the vague trails, and climbing rocks and trees. Finally the perfection was brought to an end in the usual way; one of the kids had to poop. I rowed us back so the boys could fish and I could have a beer.
Cavan absolutely adores fishing. Tommy likes fishing, but really adores organizing the tackle box. I don't actually hate fishing. I like eating fish, but am happy to simply buy them. Fishing to me is like standing outside a store and handing a stranger 20 bucks and a shopping basket, and then standing around waiting to see if he will come back out with anything or not. What ever it is that I don't get, Cavan does. I sat in the shade, and read my book and drank my beer, occasionally answering his good questions about hooks, bait, rods, fish feeding habits, etc. They were thoughtful smart eight year old unpreconceived, questions. He changed bait a time or two. He tried different depths. He fished the sunny side of the boat and the shady side. He patiently cleared seaweed from his hook and from his weight.
A long time after his younger brother had gone on to other activities, Cavan kept working his pole. Finally he said, 'Do you think I'll catch a fish?'
'I don't know,' I said putting down my book, 'but you know what Cavan? You work so hard at fishing that you will catch a lot of fish in your time. And if you work at everything in your life the same way you do your fishing you will be a very successful man. I am very proud of you.' He smiled. 'Why don't you put your pole in the rod holder and we'll read some more Narnia?' He did. We read for maybe ten minutes or so and I looked up and said, 'Cavan! Look at your pole!' It was bent double. His Dale Earnhardt Jr. 2-lb. test trout pole had all it could handle. He struggled to reel it in, and I pulled the line by hand away from the boat so it wouldn't foul on the rudder. Once Cavan got the pole out of the rod holder he had that little closed reel singing. If you remember, when you were a kid, it's hard to reel in a fish and breathe at the same time. The whole crew was at his shoulder by now, wondering whether it was really a fish or had he just caught his hook on the bottom. Finally it came up near the surface where we could start to see it.
'What is it, Dad?'
'It's a shark.' The dogfish was about three feet long and trying to shake free. Carla ran for her camera. Cavan was nearly hyperventilating. It broke loose a little before Tommy or Sophia got a good look at it, but the boat was thrilled with the capture of what really was the perfect fish for an eight year old.
'How big was it Dad?'
'About three feet.' I say.
'No it wasn't!' Carla scoffed.
'It was.'
'No it wasn't.'
'How big do you think it was?'
She moved her hands a yard apart.
'That's three feet,' Marge agreed.
'Well, maybe it's two and a half,' she admitted (and who knows why) grudgingly. You would have thought we were paying a bounty.
Cavan was re-baiting his hook and giving Tommy a play by play on bait selection criterion. I got my cell phone out so he could call his pal Tate back in Ferndale.
The next morning Tommy caught one. As we were finally getting ready to leave the anchorage, Cavan reeled in his line to put the pole away and had another one, this one the biggest of the lot. The legend of the Shark Hunters of Skull Island had been born. If you doubt it, just ask one of them. You might want to sit down and open your beer first.

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