Cast off the dock lines friday and went to the next island over. Vieques. Went over with a family that are liveaboards here at the marina. They have a 65 foot expedition trawler. Its a stinkpot but they are very fun people. Their daughter is Paiges age.

James on the left already in the water, Paige in the middle and Alicia on the right. It looks like she is standing on a ledge but they all jumped from the top deck. This is the Harper family boat, Buccaneer.

Paige and Alicia relaxing after a tough day at the office.

Caught a little grouper night fishing.

The next night at sunset I was tossing a line off the stern. Tossing a lure the kids gave me for Xmas. I could see the lure coming to the boat when WHAM! Something really big and FAST hit it. Its rather light gear. 10 lb line and such. It ran off about 100 feet of line in about 1 second. I tightened up the drag a bit and POW, broke the line at the reel. The pole was completely bent over double. I cant believe it didn't break. Dawn was doing dished and she though we were shooting off fireworks it was so loud when it broke. I have no idea what I hooked into but it was big and very fast. Whole thing was maybe 3 seconds from start to finish. There is some monster out there with my brand new lure and about 150 feet of 10 lb line trailing it.

Now here is a good one........

We were snorkeling on Sunday. Trying out our spiffy new swim fins. Pretty nice. Lots of trutles and rays and such. I was hovering over a ray and yelled for Dawn to come over. She looked at it and said she was not a fan. When she looked up and was kicking down she kicked a manatee. We were in about 10 feet of water. The manatee was just sleeping I guess. I hadn't even noticed it. Looks like a giant boulder. And let me tell you something about manatees. THEY ARE HUGE! So this thing that looks like a giant grey minivan is right below Dawn as she puts he head back in the water. Its maybe 5 feet down from her coming out of a sand cloud it had kicked up when Dawn booted it. Dawn is screaming through her snorkel wa izz ii wa izz ii!       Bloody histerical!     A mannanee!    I yelled back through my snokel as the thing went right under me.  (You tend to lose the Ts and Ss when you comunicate through snorkel gear.)  Its easly 8 foot long. If you were to hug it your arms wouldnt even go 1/2 way around. Must weigh 500 pounds or more. Dawn is  flipping out at this point. The manatee just goes lumbering along.  I was laughing so hard I though I was going to drown myself. It was about 1/2 hour before we got Dawn peeled off the ceiling!

Paige snorkeling after the manatee incident. Also afraid of barracudas.

Sunset over Puerto Rico. This is about when the big fish stole my gear.

So now its Monday and were cruising back. Paige was in the saloon lying on the couch and Dawn is up front getting set to get out all the lines and fenders from the anchor locker. We are approaching the entrance to the harbor which is very narrow and ugly. I do not like going through that pass. I yell for Paige to come up and help Dawn with the gear. She got up to fast, and low on blood sugar. She comes out to the cockpit and faints dead away. I heard a thud and looked down and she is out cold under the table. Eyes open, glassed over, staring up. I am pretty much committed to the pass at this point. I doubt I could have turned around without grounding. I yell for Dawn to come back, that something is wrong with Paige. She starts to come around and Dawn gets her going on some juice. We surf 5 foot waves into the harbor. We are both shaking. Scared the @#$$# out of us. And still had to dock the boat which is enough of a hand shaker on its own.

Crash landed safely. Wasn't pretty and I lost a couple points on style but didn't break anything. Back on the dock for now.

M