When I was out of college, I spent some time in FL and at the tail end of my visit with my sister in FT Lauderdale, I arranged for crew jobs on two yaucht deliveries. The first was on the Congere a 52 footer that was headed home to NY after the southern circuit. A fast trip and almost a deadly one, but that's another story.
After flying straight back down, I joined 3 others for a trip to San Francisco, via the Panama Canal. I ended up jumping ship in Acapulco, oops another story. It was on a 42 foot Crocker designed catch out of Maine, what a beautiful boat...Saltheart you'd certainly appreciate the beautiful lines of that boat. The skipper was an X profost martial out of Gwintanomo Bay Cuba (spelling ?) and that's another long story and related to my jumping ship.
I remember catching a dolphin (not the mammal) on a hand line and what was probably a diamond jig of some sort. It was one of several hooked but never landed. What amazed me was that in minutes the water around the boat was filled with sharks. These were small 3 footers, to some monsters up around 12 foot and several species as I recall. Now somewhere between the Bahamas and Cuba (yeah another story), I had the brilliant idea of hanging over the side on a line, just to cool off briefly due to the unbearable heat. Well I underestimated the force that would be created, as we were under sail in an usually good mornings breeze and I lost my grip on the line in short order. Well I'm telling you, talk about scared ***tless, go try to tread water without making any fuss. I know I tried and pleaded with El Capitain, to come about ASAP and pick me up. I thought I'd be shark food for sure, and although I didn't see any fins, I'm certain I was being eyeballed from below.
In many ways, it's amazing I lived through those couple years
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