My brother lived and worked in Nassau for a while at what was then called the Balmoral Hotel and Beach Club - as I recall. Definitely, the word Balmoral was involved.
I was visiting with my friend, Nancy. We knew there were sharks in the area but my sister-in-law, Beth, assured us that they came in at night but spent their days out beyond the reef. Have a feel for where this is headed?
So one day, Nancy and I were floating on our backs in about four feet of water off the hotel beach when this conversation started:
Nancy: How do the sharks know to go back over the reef in the morning?
Me (with a condescending tone and absolutely no knowledge of animal behavior on the land or in the sea): Instinct. They're animals. They just know. We have nothing to worry about.
Five seconds of silence.
Stranger on the beach: Shark!
Nancy and I straightened up and looked towards the beach where a shouting man was pointing at a fin, a fin that moved along the shore in that smooth glide I'd seen shark fins do in documentaries. The fin was between us and the beach.
Not a moment for strategizing. It was a moment for reaction and we both had the same one: get out of the water. We began to run for the beach.
Now, with some distance from the event, I can see that running towards the shark, while probably slightly disconcerting to the shark, is not actually the best approach. But that was what we did coincidentally making a big splash which is apparently very appealing to sharks. (This was pre-Jaws so a lot of this information had not been discussed ad infinitum.) We were heading right for him.
And then, a hero! His name was Werner and that was about all I recall except that he rushed into the water and jumped with a great splash directly in front of the shark. The shark didn't like that splash. He turned and headed back where he came from which was, by the way, not over the reef.
Nancy and I staggered out of the water to safety. I should admit that the top of my two-piece bathing suit was no longer in place. I fixed it before there were any repercussions involving hotel security. However, I did coincidentally have a slight tear on the strap of my suit. I have no idea how it happened, but it was not during that encounter. When asked about it, however, I was always tempted to respond with some variation of "Did I ever tell you about the time I had to escape from a shark in the Bahamas?"
Not a lie.
© 2022 Jane Kelly
