When I was in 8th grade my best friend's dad took both Fred (his son and my best friend) and I by boat on a surf trip up coast from our Florida hometown of Hollywood to Singer Island, about a half day cruise. There used to be a large ship that had run aground there.... it was named the "Amaryllis". I always thought that was a euphemism for 'I'm a real ass," I only learned in later life that "Amaryllis" is the name of a flower. I think Monrovia was the ships country of origin....the ships large welded panels were rusting and occasionally one would fall off into the ocean..not a truly safe place to surf.
From the intracoastal where Fred's dad docked the boat to the beach, we walked in great anticipation of surf. The wind was howling and the wind chop was huge (by eighth grade standards). As we walked north towards the wreck we noticed a rather large shark that had died and washed up onshore, I remember it being about 4 1/2 feet long and Fred and I poked and prodded and were amazed at the rows of teeth. We talked about how "scary" and "dangerous" it looked and although we didn't admit it at the time it put fear in both of us. We continued our walk north and about another 200 yards up the beach we spotted yet another shark, this time it was a hammerhead, and much larger than the Black Tip Shark we had seen a few minutes earlier. We set our boards down and with our childlike curiosity we examined it in amazement. We had spent many hours in the water but had never seen a shark this close-up.
We sat there for about a half an hour and never talked about what we both were thinking. The water was dark, murky and the wind was blowing hard. The current was strong and we had just seen 2 large dead sharks in a matter of a few hundred yards....I don't remember if Fred asked me or if I asked Fred "Are you ready?", but we both hopped in the water and surfed for about an hour. I still remember the waves. Blown out wind chop with hard onshore winds. We enjoyed every minute of it.
About a month later we read in the newspaper where a young kid, if I remember correctly he was 9 years old, was attacked by sharks while playing on an inflatable raft right there at that very location next to the wreck. He survived the attack but what always stuck in my mind was that it required about 1,000 stitches to close his wounds.
This story has been logged in my memory for 32 years but I never recalled it until this evening when another surfing buddy of mine, John, mentioned that today someone was attacked by a shark at Singer Island. I wonder how many other surfing stories are logged in our collective minds waiting for the right combination of words to trigger the correct sequence of synapses to rekindle a meaningful surf memory. Like the saying goes "If you don't still surf then you never did".