Parasailing

We're on vacation in Daytona Beach with my parents and my sister's family staying right on the ocean in a gorgeous condo. Life is good. We woke up this morning and mom called wanting to know if we would like to go parasailing. I've never been and was a bit leery. The whole thing seemed a little shady to me: being dangled in the air over the ocean with lots of sharks by a parachute with 2,000 feet of rope separating us from the boat pulling us. Granted we didn't see any sharks, just dolphins, but I know they are in the ocean, and one of the biggest shark bite centers in the whole wide world is 20 miles south of where we are staying. I tried to get Dave to go, but he said he'd been and thought it would be a fun experience for me. I figured my mom had done it a few years ago, and she's never gone on a roller-coaster ride with me, so clearly it can't be THAT scary. It worked out that both Dave and I were able to go with Jim, Julie, Max, and Logan. Mom watched the kids, which was great. Dave and I were the last people to go.

What a neat experience! It was so quiet, calm, and peaceful way up there in the air! The ocean looked like mint jelly and we couldn't even hear the boat or anything from the beach. Very soothing. We started to get pulled in and the captain of the boat usually dips the parasailers feet in the ocean once before he reels them all the way in. He did that for us.

And then we got completely dunked a second time. Thank goodness for life vests! When we came up out of the water we could see the boat in the distance with the back hood up and smoke coming out. Not too comforting. After a few minutes another little boat (it was a raft with an engine that ferries people from the beach to the parasailing boat) came to get us.

But the boat didn't pull right up next to us because of the parachute and all the other ropes that were attached to us. The captain of the little boat dove in and swam to us to take off all of our connecting ropes and then we had to swim to the boat (which didn't feel too close). The whole time I'm thinking, "SHARKS! SHARKS! SHARKS!" It seems completely unreasonable, but we had just listened to Finding Nemo a few times yesterday. I only hoped that if sharks came by they would say, "Humans are friends, not food."

So we got on the little boat and it wouldn't start. It literally takes the guy three minutes to get the boat started. Then he takes us back to the smoking parasailing boat! Really. I couldn't make this up. We had to wait on the smoking boat for about 10 minutes until the little boat came back for us. I am very glad we got to go parasailing, it was quite the adventure, and luckily no one got hurt. It could have been a whole lot worse. I don't think I'll do it again anytime soon, though.