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Bonding in the Bahamas
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“No, that was a swordfish.”
“No, it wasn’t,” he said, proving that the debating gene comes from his side of the family. “I’m not talking about Old Man and the Sea …”
“Yeah, I know. Old Man had a marlin, but this fight is more like the one in Islands in the Stream …”
“Right, it’s a marlin …”
“But in Islands in the Stream they hooked a broadbill swordfish …”
“No, it …”
“Reel! Reel!” yelled Captain Billy Black, a grizzly with a perma-tan who’s been fishing monster marlin all over the Caribbean for the last three decades. He terminated our inane literary debate with the implied threat that if I let the line go slack and the fish threw the hook, I’d be swimming back to the dock.
We had arrived in Marsh Harbour the day before for what was to be a boys-only portion of my dad’s 70th birthday celebration. When we checked into the Abaco Beach Resort & Boat Harbour, Tim noticed a photo pinned to the message board. “We must be at the right place,” he said. It was a shot of a 900-pound bluefin tuna caught during a fishing tournament earlier in the summer — one of six big-time tourneys hosted by the resort each year.
The rest of arrival day was a blur. We went right from a swim off the beach to the bar by the pool for an extended happy hour full of “remember whens,” keeping alive the oral history of our family’s most important events.
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Zach Stovall / CT&L Abaco’s bonefish flats |
“Remember when you drank the glass of water with Tim’s contact lenses in it?”
“Remember when you sliced your wrist open trying to get the milk out of a coconut to mix with rum?”
After a Bacchanalian feast of spicy Bang Bang Shrimp, tuna sashimi and grilled grouper at the resort’s excellent Angler’s Restaurant, it was back to the bar, talking and drinking until they pulled down the shutters on us.
Forty minutes into the fight with the marlin, I was really regretting those last four or five rounds. So much rum-tinged sweat soaking my shirt that I smelled like the dumpster behind a Barcardi factory. Each time the fish made a run, the dog, Little Foot — who wears shades to prevent sun-caused cataracts — started barking. He’s lived with Captain Billy aboard the 50-foot Duchess ever since he was a pup, so it wasn’t surprising that he got excited about a fish on. What was amazing is that Little Foot had started yapping before anyone else even knew we’d hooked the marlin. And earlier, he’d started barking at the empty blue ocean a full 10 seconds before a pod of dolphins surfaced. “I can’t explain it,” shrugged Billy.
“What brand of sunglasses does he wear?” asked my dad. “I need to get me some of those.”
After nearly an hour, my arms were limp as cooked noodles. I was so dehydrated that even my jaw muscles were cramping. But I finally reeled the fish within sight of the boat. Captain Billy was like a one-armed short-order cook, rushing from one side of the boat to the other to keep an eye on the fish, then back to the wheel to steer and then readying gloves and a hook remover, all the while yelling directions to me and my dad. Tim climbed down to the deck carrying a $10 disposable underwater camera. “Um,” he asked Billy, “is it okay if I jump in and get a picture of the fish?” This stopped the captain in his tracks. For one thing, the boat was moving — both to keep the fish healthy and to prevent it from cutting the line off on the props — and second, marlin are armed with dagger-sharp bills and are always feisty when hooked. In fact, the big news around the docks that week was the true story about a blue marlin that jumped out of the water, speared a fisherman through the chest and took him overboard off Bermuda. Billy wasn’t sure if Tim was joking. And, of course, he wasn’t.
Billy talked my cousin out of suicide-by-seafood by offering to let him help wrangle and release the estimated 300-pound blue. While they were pulling the hook, the marlin thrashed and raked the captain with his bill before swimming off triumphantly, adding fresh-flowing blood to our sweat-soaked, diesel-smoked, hairy-chested, salty-language-peppered day. Even allowing for the tasty pesto lobster wraps and fruit cups that Abaco Beach’s chef had packed for our lunch, there was more testosterone on board than in a Tour de France first-aid kit.
Though it’s most celebrated for being close to offshore waters rich with marlin, tuna, mahi-mahi and wahoo, Abaco Beach Resort also sits near productive flats. The following morning we traded our heavy gear for light tackle and followed guides out into mangroves. This time, Tim had the hot rod, hooking a dozen bonefish. It was a blast, battling the three- and four-pound fish in skinny water, but the tenor of our guys' trip really called for getting back to dealing with something that could shove its nose through your sternum. Or worse.
“You want to see some sharks?” asked Kay Politano of Above and Below Abaco, the dive and tour operation based at the resort’s marina. She must have noticed that Tim’s “I Have Gas” T-shirt was cut to reveal an arm covered in a frenzy of shark tattoos — each an animal he’d seen up close underwater. We’d taken to calling my cousin “Mongo,” both for his sophisticated sense of decorum and because the sleep deprivation and endless bull-and-beer sessions had worn him down to a slack-jawed shell of himself. The mention of toothy critters, though, instantly perked him up.
On the way out to the reef, Kay and her crew stopped at a secret spot in the Sea of Abaco to show us a bizarre sight for the Bahamas: a full-grown lionfish, a beautiful and painfully poisonous native of the Pacific and Indian Oceans that must have been released from someone’s aquarium.
Next stop was Shark Ledge. My dad’s last scuba dive had left him with a bum ear, so he’d be snorkeling above the rest of us.
“The sharks might take an interest in you bobbing around up there,” I said.
“No problem,” he said. “If one attacks, he’s going to have to swim through a lot of dirty water to get to me.”
“Yeah,” added Frank. “If they think it’s bad when a squid shoots ink, wait until they get a load of what my big brother can do.”
I swam down over the coral wall trying to shake that image. It’d taken only a few days away from the civilizing effect of women for us to devolve into grunting beasts that wallowed in bathroom humor. It felt great.
At the bottom, three Caribbean reef sharks approached. I pointed to the biggest one and signaled Tim to swim close to it so I could get a picture. Without a moment’s hesitation, he took off after the shark into deep water. As he herded it back towards me, I could tell by the gleam in his eye that he was deciding where on his hide he was going to immortalize the scene.
Caribbean Travel & Life is the magazine for anyone in search of the perfect tropical getaway. Each issue presents expert insider’s advice on where to find the Caribbean’s best beaches and attractions, its finest resorts and spas, liveliest beach bars and activities, and its friendliest people.
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