May 13, 2009

A Boil of Fish

Posted in Fun, History, Life, Personal tagged Atlantic Ocean, Block Island, Martha's Vinyard, sailboat, sailing at 12:30 am by pdxfirefly

  I inherited my Father’s love of sailing and when I lived in Manhattan,  my favorite boyfriend had a 38 foot sailboat and we would go for long cruises in the Atlantic Ocean to Martha’s Vinyard and Block Island.   Yes, I have a few wonderful stories from those sailings myself!

One memorable summer’s cruise was to last 12 days.  We were provisioned for about 9 of them, planning on eating at various restaurants at the ports where we would anchor his beautiful sailboat, Astarte. 

Since refrigeration was at a premium, we discovered fake margarine that didn’t need to be refrigerated.  I don’t even know why we bothered with it–it was awful, but we didn’t make that discovery until we were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!

At the beginning of our long cruise, we had to sail across Long Island Sound on our way to the ocean and that is when we saw an unforgetable phemonenom.  It was a “boil of fish”. 

 While we were moving along quickly through the water under full sail, there was something off to our port side (left) in the water that caught our eyes.  The water looked like it was at a full rolling boil, just like it would look in a pan of boiling water.  As we looked more carefully, we discovered that there were hundreds of fish breaking the surface of the water and some were even jumping out of it.  It was a remarkable sight and one I have never forgotten.  Also one that I have never seen since.

We surmised that these little fish were all near the surface of the water for one reason alone and that reason was one of self-preservation.   We decided that there must be a very hungry, very large fish underneath them looking for his dinner!   And so the “boil of fish” that we observed was comprised of hundreds of little fish escaping “Jaws”!

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