a hair-raising experience

The rain was coming down it sheets. It was no tropical storm but still very impressive -- with the dark, pregnant clouds tumbling over the sky in a never-ending procession. The sun was obfuscated in this dark, windy mess and so time was lost, as it often is anyway on vacations. Glancing at a clock would have shown it to be dusk... but we thought of no such thing.

Four of us, two brothers, one girlfriend and myself, decided to throw on bathing suits and run down to the beach. Before we even reached the sand, we were drenched, our hair hanging in strings about our faces. Once on the beach, the boys stood ankle deep in the furious surf and complained of cold. They were right, it was frigid with the pelting rain and chilling wind. We girls, after sampling the water along side the boys, decided to wade in waist deep.
On Cape Fear and the Fryingpan Shoals, when the tide goes out, you can walk out quite some ways in the water. Almost immediately, you will find yourself waist or chest deep but then there are little under-water hills that surprise you as the water level drops to your shins. So you keep walking and before long you are over 100 feet from the shore. This makes for an amazing bathing experience. The same shoals, however, are the meeting point of four very strong currents, which create a sort of intense, tunnel that drags every sort of sea beast to the near shores of populated island beaches -- little fishies, crustaceans of all kinds, big fishies, sand dollars, man-of-war jelly fish and sharks.

As Christine and I sought warmth in the balmy North Carolina waves, wading further out from shore and laughing as the rain bounced off our noses, a fifth wheel crashed our party. A six-foot sandshark was taking advantage of the rain, which brings little fishies out to feed in greater numbers, and the expansive 3-5 foot tidal basin created at low tide. Not to mention, it was dusk -- prime feeding time.

In the guide books and the movies, they tell you not to panic and simply move away from the carnivorous beasts as quickly but splashlessly as possible. Yeah right. No one knows how they'll react when they're hit until they're actually hit.

Christine turned to me and with a swallow asked,

"Did you see that."

"Yes!" I think I shouted.

We turned on our heels and "sprinted" out of the water, the waist-high water slowing our desperate thrashing to a mere trudge.

Once back on the safe, ankle-deep water's edge, we asked my brothers if they'd seen our fast moving friend. They replied in the affirmative, chuckling because only one night before we'd all watched Jaws. My eldest little brother swallowed another eruption of laughter as he pointed to our hair, which was suddenly and literally standing straight on end.

The electrically charged air, foreshadowing a lightning strike, caused static electricity to make our long hair stand straight up. This time we all turned on our heels and dashed back to the cottage.

Moral of the story: Don't swim at dusk in the ocean during an electric storm.

In other news, I am back in Haiti and all's well. I will post on things Haitian tomorrow.