Guides, squids, stingrays and spiny urchins.
Counting miles in open water swimming often doesn’t tell the whole story of any particular swim. This morning we swam along the north side of Great Harbor, Peter Island. We set a turnaround time of 25 minutes, but I had a big rock at the mouth as a goal. To maintain visibility, we use safety swim buoys on our swims. I’ve noticed that if the buoy, which usually trails behind me, passes me as I’m swimming, I have a pretty good tailwind. This was the case as we swam along the harbor on our way out, so I knew we’d be swimming into a stiff wind on our return to the yacht. This group was up for the task, though, and they stroked confidently to the finish. My point is that into the wind, 1.5 miles can easily swim like 2.
A rainbow and a fresh frittata fueled our morning swim.
A frigate (or boobie?) buzzed us as we took a mid swim break!
We sailed around to Benyures Bay on Norman Island. There are 16 mooring balls here, and it being low season for BVI travel, we are alone. The water is gin-clear, and we can easily see details on the bottom at 20 feet. A barracuda quickly took up residence under the boat. Birdsong fills the air from the nearby forested shoreline. We snorkel, nap, read, snack. Lunch comes and goes and some of us challenge ourselves to a second snorkel or nap. Heather and I spend some time with a school of squid in shallow water, smarter than their fish neighbors and full of curiosity and character.
An adolescent French angel fish was fiercely defending a nest, and the squid seemed cautiously curious with us during a snorkel in Benyures Bay.
As we began our afternoon swim, I was thinking about how I and my fellow guides have done this job in our 30s, 40s, and now in our 50s. Adventure travel guiding is often done by people in their 20s, but we’ve been able to pull it off with each other’s help and from the help of crew like Zack, who is our 26 year old deckhand who can also guide and so much more. I think guiding has kept us young, and serves as an incentive to stay fit. Air travel, along with spending 17 days sleeping in hammocks and tiny forepeak berths tests our resolve, steels us. We take better care of ourselves during trips now. We sleep more, drink less, hydrate thoroughly and slather on more sunscreen more often.
Our second swim of the day brought us out beyond the mouth of the bay, and guest Marcus spotted a retreating black-tipped reef shark. This is a rare and special sighting, and we are delighted when a sighting like this is made. In the war of humans against sharks, humans are winning as an estimated 100 million sharks are killed every year.
We spotted a cousin of the shark, a massive southern ray, resting on the bottom. You couldn’t get a good sense for exactly how big this guy was until you swam down to it. Heather did a photo with Zack next to it for scale. Zack is 6’, almost 7 with fins. The ray was as long as he was, tip to tail. We also saw lots of other reef fish out there, and some healthy coral. Heather brought a short spined sea urchin to the surface for a quick echinoderm lesson, and everyone had a chance to check it out up close.
I’ve gone through all the stroke video with the guests' analysis at this point, and we all work on little tweaks to improve our efficiency. Guest Heather has had some particularly big breakthroughs. Sam’s stroke is re-awakening after some time off.
A big barracuda along with many jacks are often seen cavorting about beneath our yacht. Our guests enjoy diving down for a look.
Painkillers, the local concoction made from pineapple and orange juices, coconut, and rum, were served with a dash of freshly grated nutmeg and a little more rum floated on top. DInner was a 4-cheese mac n cheese with a local watermelon salad. This watermelon is unreal: juicy, firm, almost meaty. Deep red. Rich watermelon flavor. I dream of it as I swing in my hammock under the moonlight, wondering if I’ll be guiding in my 60s, and hoping so.
Hopper