Sail away, sail away, sail away...

Yesterday I got to get back out on the water. It's been at least 9 months. Waaaaaay to long. I have some wonderful friends who have a boat that they take out onto Kaneohe Bay. And they are nice enough to let me tag along. Thanks guys! So not only did I get to go back on the boat but I got to go snorkeling again! Yea!!! I love snorkeling. It's so much fun! You and me, Keao, we're going!

One of the places that I like to snorkel, though it can be a little disconcerting, is the reefs in Kaneohe Bay . The water drops off so quickly (hence drop off) by them and all I can think is a shark can come out of that deep and I wouldn't be able to see it until it's too late. I've thought of doing scuba but I think it might be a little much for me. Last year I was out with my friends again and their Pastor and his wife came along as well. Their pastor is a real local guy and loves to spear fish. No one else wanted to snorkel so I tagged along after him. I'm all about the buddy system. Probably because it's ingrained. When you have a family as big as mine you got to stick together or you got left. But back to the story. As I got farther from the boat a thought hit me, I'm in Kaneohe Bay , hammer head shark breeding ground and where tiger and great white sharks have been spotted, following a guy spearing fish, blood and flailing usually follow fish getting speared and here I am without a single weapon. Lovely. I kept getting creeped out. The something is watching me feeling was riding hard. I would do a quick 360 to check the surrounding area. Don't ask me how that would help, but I would feel better afterwards. I was proud of myself because I stuck it out. I ended up staying in the water for about 5 hours.

The kids watching a fish get scaled and filleted

Today my friends let me use their underwater camera. At first I really tried to catch the fish perfectly, but as you can probably guess that didn't work out so I ended just randomly snapping pictures and hoped for the best. I was glad that some of the pictures turned out.

Eel

Butterfly Fish, Convict Tang and Yellow Tang

Boxfish

Goatfish

It was so nice out today and for the most part the water was nice and warm but every once and a while you would hit a cold pocket. Then even the chicken skin had chicken skin. I finally had to get out though the breeze in the air was almost worse then the water. My friend gave a nice hot chai tea. That helped alot. I kept spilling it all over my hands for some reason. I think the fingers weren't getting warm fast enough and they decided to take the matter in hand.

On the way back my friends little girl wanted ride in the front and couldn't without a adult. And me, being the nice aunty that I am, rode with her. It wasn't so bad except for the waves that would periodically hit me. Then I was freezing! Though he denied it I think the 'Skipper' splashed me on purpose. They certainly laughed enough when I got wet.

Soon we got back to the harbor, packed up and headed to my other home. I have like 3 now. After a marvelously warm shower I was ready to play one of my new favorite games. It's called Syzygy. It kinda a mix between Scrabble and a crossword puzzle. You are trying to be the first to use all of your tiles and all of the tiles in the draw pile. It's fast paced and you have to think quickly. Hence the fact I usually don't win, in fact my friends usually whup my tush, but I have so much fun that I keep playing it. It's amazes me that a (for the most part) fully functional brain can go blank so quickly when faced with the challenge putting letter tiles together to make words. For some reason I always seem to automatically hoard letters trying to make bigger words. And not only that but I never seem to remember that I can rearrange them over and over again if I want. Then I get stuck when I need to draw more tiles. I maintain that they cheat since they play all the time and I only get to when I go over there Sundays and Wednesdays. But I'm not salty, no. Poor loser, who me? Never.