Day 14 (Thursday, June 26) by Mike

Sailing with Dummies (Hawaii to Alaska Edition)

More scuba diving today. Dave, the Midway Airport manager, joined us. It turns out he’s from Tulsa so we had a lot to talk about in between dives.

On our first dive Dave and I went down and were waiting at the bottom of the anchor chain for Melinda and Josh to join us. The area was teeming with small fish from 8-16 inches in length. They crowded around us at the surface and followed us to the bottom.

After waiting a couple of minutes I felt a tug on my ear and turned around, expecting to see Josh or Melinda. There was no one there. One of the fish had bitten my ear! Before long they were nipping at my hair and on my fins. I started trying to kick and hit them but they are too fast for that. Finally I went to the bottom and hovered near that sand and they moved on.

Dave and I moved along with our dive without waiting any longer. The fish were not as abundant here as they were at some of the other spots. Nevertheless there are lots of things to see and the fish are fun to look at.

Our air was running low so we proceeded back to the boat and held onto the anchor chain at 15 feet for a safety decompression stop. And we were once again surrounded by those pesky fish. They started biting our hands and fins and hair. So we started punching and kicking but to no avail. Luckily we got aboard without any blood or marks.

Our second dive was near a cargo pier where there are supposed to be lots of big fish. Unfortunately visibility was very poor there and there wasn’t much to see.

I am happy to report that I did not see a shark today.

Tomorrow is our last day at Midway and we plan to spend it on the island. That means that I did not get eaten by a shark while scuba-diving at Midway this year!

Daily Cuisine:

We ate at the cafeteria whenever we were on the island, which today was breakfast and supper. We are officially spoiled to the good food. We have decided to wait until after supper to leave tomorrow so we can have one last cafeteria meal.

Fishing Report:

Fishing is still not allowed in this national monument. I still think this is a lousy rule.

Arts and Entertainment:

Around 8:00 we were entertained by the local rock-and-roll band. They were good. In particular the guitarist called “A” was very good. The singer called “Zen” was very entertaining and made it really fun. His imitation of a gooney bird was funny. About halfway through we were surprised to see Dave, our dive buddy join them for awhile. He can play a mean lead guitar and sings good, too. They even let me play keyboard on a couple of songs and didn’t make fun of me. It made for a fun evening.