First Ocean Sailing

6/10/07 – After a night of being periodically woken up by dolphins surfacing in the marina, we were suddenly woken in the morning by some fisherman and their very large motor. We got up and ate some of the grocery store powdered donuts for breakfast and left at around 11:00am. Until this morning, I have sailed exclusively on the Intracoastal Waterway, but we decided that it would be a good idea to go out on the ocean. The Intracoastal Waterway is a channel that is maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers that is sheltered by land from the actual ocean. There are inlets periodically that allow boats to get from the ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway. We left the waterway at the Ponce de Leon Inlet and shut off our motor. The wind was acceptable for a short time before it completely died. We decided to go swimming with the exception of my sister, who thought that the many dolphins that we were seeing would mistake her fingers for the fish that consist of their diet. She eventually jumped in, only to hurriedly climb in about ten seconds later. The wind eventually came up and we sailed around for a couple of hours. We were sailing back to the inlet and my sister was down in the galley making some peanut butter sandwiches. My dad and I just happened to be looking when a big shark jumped way out of the water in a spiraling motion about 100 feet off our port bow. We estimated that it was about 6-7 feet long and its tail was about 2 feet out of the water at the height of its jump. We began to think that Shannon may have been right to be afraid of swimming in the water. We continued into the inlet just outside the edge of a thunderstorm that we had been watching brewing before heading up to Daytona Beach. We docked in a marina and took showers to wash all the ocean salt off of us before going to dinner at what appeared to be a very nice place. As we walked in the door, I was worried that they would frown upon my t-shirt and shorts until I saw a guy at the bar with a giant grey beard, a tank top on, and a big tattoo covering his bald head. It ended up being very good food. We walked back to the boat after dinner and my dad and sister packed their things and got a taxi to the airport.

note: I have been informed that what we saw was almost certainly not a shark. It was, however, very large and ferocious looking.