It's a fair chunk of the way to Cape Verde but the pictures accompanying the article seem to be of lanzarotte beaches. Before reading the details I'd been thanking my lucky stars that El Hierro where I was a few weeks back has an abundance of tidal swimming pools.
Very true, few people experience more than one in their lives
Or they thought you were food!
Good film
How does a line with fenders stop a shark ?.....I mean it obviously works because you are here to answer my question....
It's sailor magic.
White paint obviously works as a shark deterrent then.As a young AB I once found myself in the water where a few hours previously we had been watching Hammerhead sharks swimming around the ship. Moored to a buoy waiting to go alongside the loading berths of the oil jetties at Mina Al Ahmadi in the Gulf, I was on a stage over the bow of a Tanker. My stage mate was a DHU who had very briefly served in the Royal Navy as some kind of electrical Whizz, nice bloke, but couldn't tie his shoe laces.
We were painting the outside of the Foc'sle Bulwarks about 40 feet above the water, and about to lower the stage slightly when he let the turns go on the horn of the stage. His end of the stage immediately dropped, but still suspended on the Gantline on which we dangled. Caught unawares I fell off followed by a big tin of white paint, two trays, rollers and brushes. ' Lofty' fell too but tangled in the slack of the gantline he hit the water bleeding from some serious rope burns.
I don't know if anyone else has been in the water when 'Shark' is called? It is a terrifying almost numbing experience, although there was no shout of Shark at the time, the evening before we had been throwing Gash to Sharks swimming around the ship. Almost frozen with fear, floating in a spreading pool of white paint which was going pink from a bleeding Lofty, I was so frightened that I didn't even feel the sting of hitting the water from 40 feet.
The Fates must have been smiling that day, as number one boat, the motor lifeboat was at the midship gangway foot where the Third Engineer was playing with the engine. He quickly realised what was going on under the bow, and hearing Lofty's screams He quickly motored to us and I managed to climb into the boat using the outboard grab life lines as a foot hold. We dragged Lofty into the boat and were soon back on board the ship.
Lofty was taken ashore with an horrendous 'score' running around his torso. He was taken to a Hospital somewhere in Kuwait City I believe and subsequently home by air.
Difficult to describe the paralysing fear that gripped me at that time, probably all the stories about Sharks and also watching them thrash about as they swarmed around the waste food thrown into the sea earlier.
PS. Sea water is for sailing on or admiring from a distance sparkling in the sun, it is not designed for swimming in....
