Meet Barry-Cuda: Four Friendly Feet of Fangs

The view from our porch on the last day of our adventure.  And before
we dive into this post, relish this quote from of  one of my  favorite authors.

“There is something fresh and crisp about the first hours of a Caribbean day, a happy anticipation that something is about to happen, maybe just up the street or around the next corner.” 
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

Later during the week, we decided to embark on an excursion aboard a sixty foot sailboat called New Horizons.  It was six incredible hours of wind, salt air, delicious food and drink and amazing underwater sights.  The time flew by as we spent the day with Captain Sven and his first mate Bill, and they introduced us to a fang-tastic new fish friend they've dubbed "Barry-Cuda".

The four foot long silvery guy hung out near the underside of the boat, and seems to recognize the green paint on the underbelly of the boat, because when Capt. Sven's boat appears, Barry knows he'll enjoy some grub.  First mate Bill always makes lunch on board, and Barry will eagerly swim to the surface to gobble up any remaining meatballs.

 He's never bitten anyone or exhibited any aggressive behavior whatsoever according to Capt. Sven, and I've been snorkeling and diving among barracuda before, finding out for myself they are actually rather shy creatures and definitely not nightmarish monsters (before nuclear med, I was once a biology major.  Can you tell?).

Here he is hanging out under the boat.  I didn't want to scare him and get too close, but you can tell he's a big, healthy boy when compared to the sixty foot sailboat.

Besides our visit with Barry, we swam with several stingrays, saw countless colorful fish, and I even accidentally found myself near a large nurse shark for about fifteen seconds before it slipped away into a dark cave.

This trip was truly amazing, and it gave me plenty of food for thought for RED HOOK, also a thriller and a side project/manuscript I'm working on right now.

As many of you know, I'm one for authenticity, and there's truly nothing more rewarding for a writer than to get their feet on the ground in the area of the world they're writing about in order to convey how it feels to actually be there so our readers get a truly meaningful experience.