The sea and the tides.

Today while traipsing through the slushy, watery, melting mess due to spring, I thought of the childhood song.
"A sailor went to sea, sea, sea
To see what he could see, see, see 
But all that he could see, see, see
Was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea"

Not that what I was was in any way blue.  It was actually kind of a brownish, tanish, tarnished white but soon it will all be gone and either mud or a fine dirt that turns oily when wet.

For a while, I lived near the ocean.  Actually, I lived near the ocean several times in my life.  The beach was just a couple houses over and down
The sand was beautifully white and glowing.  It could be hot if the day were hot and the sand had been exposed to the sun while other times the sand was firm and kind of gray because it was wet.
I always preferred low tide to  high tide.

During low tide you could head out and swim among the coral, checking out everything and keeping a weary eye out for moray eels.   Often times you would see so many different types of fish, you would just watch in awe. There were times when I wished I had retractable gills so I could stay down for hours, rather than coming up for air on a regular basis.

Using tanks in that depth was ridiculous because the low tide meant it was not very deep  You could walk out to the coral and if you began swimming you were just a foot above the coral

Low tide meant  you could walk out pretty far on the sand and once you began swimming you were not that far above the coral.  I remember standing on top of coral and the water was below my waist and I could actually sit on the coral and gently waft back and forth, much like one imagines seaweed does. 
 To and fro,
back and forth

 

Once the tides came in, it was so much harder to get out to the coral.  The ocean was rougher and you had to go further out to get to the same coral. It was also harder to stay on the coral because the ocean pushes and pulls you much like your little brother pushed you around as a kid.

The only bad thing with swimming in the ocean were the Portuguese man of war. 

They float on the top of the ocean looking like small bubbles but they have long stringy tendrils that spread out around them and are not seen by the unwary swimmer.  

But when those tendrils touch your skin, they HURT!!!!!!  It is worse than being stung by a bee!

I never had to pull the stingers off like a bee stinger but I did have to put something on it to get rid of the stinging.  

I usually rubbed wet ocean sand on it and it worked well enough.  I still hated those things cause you could never see the one behind you before it stung!