Christmas Day 1967

At 1100 hours, we set our anchor on a grassy sand conch pasture under 12 feet of sapphire sea. Caribesque lay quietly, cooled by a soft breeze passing over the reef to windward.

I hastily flaked the jib on the foredeck and lashed it with a couple of sail stops, while Vince and Tiff furled the mainsail. Mo, our slender brunette cook, was rummaging in the galley, her thoughts on Christmas dinner. I was craving my first swim in tropical water and a dive on the reef — on a wonderland I had only imagined from thumbing through my parents copy of Silent World by Jacques Cousteau when I was a boy.

It had been a rough eight-day offshore passage from Moorehead city. We had worked well together, standing watches, cooking, navigating, sewing blown out sails and maintaining, as Captain Fay insisted, constant vigilance. At age 20, I was on the bottom rung of the ladder.

Observing the palm-fringed white sand beaches, swaying deep green casaurina pines and the variable blues of the Bahamian Banks, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would live anywhere else. But my thoughts wandered home — to my family and the deep-rooted traditions of Christmas in the Hudson Highlands. Home to a Christmas dinner at Ienia with 24 first cousins and that many more aunts, uncles and distant relatives who would appear from all corners of the country to reunite the Benjamin family. We called it Benjamania.

Vince Roberts, our navigator and treasure hunter, was eager to show me the reef, just as he had instructed me in the use of the sextant, almanacs and star finder during the voyage south.

Through years of scavenging in these islands, and once shipwrecked on San Salvador, he had developed a preternatural power of observation. He had that sixth sense that comes with living on the edge of adventure and peril. He could pick arrowheads out of a field or find shark teeth lodged in a cliff, a piece of eight in the sand. Vince’s brain worked liked a sculptor, chopping away at anything not resembling the object he sought. He knew how to live off the sea.

Emptying the contents of a large mesh bag on the cockpit sole, Vince told me to pick out a mask, snorkel and fins.

I adjusted the strap on my mask, selected a purple snorkel, pulled on a pair of black and yellow fins and waddled towards the rail, penguin style.

“Don’t put your mask on now. Won’t work on a dry head.”

“Got it, Vince.” I flopped over the side, landing like a suitcase in the water.

“Now spit in the mask and swish it around; it will keep the glass from fogging up.”

Donning my freshly salivated mask, I put my head under, and at last in the embrace of the balmy sea, the turquoise blur and all its contents suddenly came into focus, magnified and clear. I felt I could reach down and scoop the wavy patterns of sand two fathoms below.

I was startled when Vince jumped in next to me. He called to Mo, “Toss us a couple of spear guns.”

Mo leaned over the rail and handed us our weapons. “Bring home a tasty Christmas dinner . . . that will fit in the oven.”

We swam toward lighter shades of blue. I powered along, the fins turbo charging my legs, leaving my arms relaxed and my hands free to point at questionable creatures. I dove to the bottom to check out the anchor, which lay on a clump of weeds like an old plow abandoned in a field. I looked up at Caribesque, tethered by a thread, her hull suspended, shafts of sunlight outlining her silhouette. I swam to the surface, blew the water out of my snorkel and breathed again.

As we approached the reef, grazing conch and starfish were joined by sea urchins tucked in the valleys of brain coral, their black clusters of toxic spines reaching out.

From somewhere in the endless blue around us, an eight-foot shark cruised across our path, 15 feet ahead. He moved with effortless grace, unhurried and dignified, his legendary jaws closed and his eye steady on us. He wore an expression of loneliness.

I nudged Vince and surfaced, spitting out my mouthpiece. Treading water, he addressed my concerns. “That’s a lemon shark. They’re well fed around here. Swim towards them and they’ll usually go away. Never turn your back to them. Look all around you. If one gets too close, whack it in the nose with the butt end of your spear gun. Of course, never draw blood.”

I’d had heard these instructions before, on more than one occasion during long night watches. Observing this prehistoric creature at one with the sea, I felt even more out of my element. “A fish out of water” brought home a whole new meaning.

We continued toward the reef, kicking along the surface, our snorkels poking above the ripples while we looked through our masks at a world without air. The seabed rose and schools of tiny iridescent blue and green fish swept close by, unconcerned. Thoughts of punching a nosy shark in the snout were washed away with the arrival of a four-foot barracuda, eyeing us inquisitively, its menacing jaws opening and closing methodically, exposing razor sharp pointed teeth.

I needed more counsel from Vince. “Keep an eye on ’em Nat. These guys can be a nuisance. If you spear a fish with a barracuda nearby, he’ll dart over in a flash and steal your catch, or at least half of it . . . rip it right off your spear. Get your next meal back to the boat fast and don’t trail it too close to your body.”

While I processed those consuming concepts, we floated into the magical theatre of the coral reef. Our world transformed into a fusion of skeletons, reaching upward from the rocky bottom, seeking the light. Each individual branch, bubbling tube and crenelated mound reflected startling shades of yellow, pink and green, set against a canvas of mutable blues. Red anemones swirled with symbiotic clown fish sequestered within their forest of poison tentacles. Crabs and shrimp squiggled along in the bony scrabble. Motivated by the gentle current, finely woven mottled green sea fans waved at us in peaceful arcs, luring us into their mysterious domain.

A brown moray eel retreated at our approach, slinking back into its lair. Its head became one with the cave, leaving a pair of beady eyes to keep watch for the next victim. A pale spotted octopus saw us coming and, embarrassed, I suppose, turned bright red then folded itself up and vanished behind a cloud of black ink. Horizontally striped parrotfish and triggerfish coursed along the avenues and passageways twisting through the enchanted garden just a few feet below the surface.

An angelfish swam up and looked me in the face, a foot or so away. She had blue lips, red eyes, flamboyant purple and gold stripes along her oval profile, pinkish dorsal fins and a red tail. What kind of world is this, I wondered. Then I tried to imagine what the angelfish saw. A dull tan scale-less hulk, with yellow hair, forward-facing blinking eyes encased in glass and a purple hose protruding from its mouth. She observed me in sympathetic bewilderment, slowly moving her head side to side. We parted with a better understanding of our respective wild kingdoms.

A poke from Vince awakened me from my mesmeric state. I followed his gun, pointed at a stealth black stingray, gliding past us, its ominous shadow moving over creatures below that rushed for shelter. We watched it fly, graceful delta wings sweeping and curling dreamily along, trailing a deadly stinger in his tail. Surfacing again, Vince remarked, “The wing tips are a wonderful delicacy. Perhaps we’ll shoot one tomorrow.”

Returning my focus to the reef, I was uplifted by the sight of a playful green turtle paddling along above a rose coral terrace. It looked happy, like a kid getting out of school, whistling a happy tune. A dusky damselfish swam obliviously in front of the turtle. The turtle snapped the damselfish neatly in half and, without altering course, deftly consumed its fragmented parts.

On the coral reef, the beauty of life rests in an equal symmetry of death. Cycles of life balance harmoniously, within the surreal webs of the silent world, no less sentient than our own.

We remained suspended over this discovery in Technicolor, until the long shadow of a passing cloud sent a chill through us and dimmed the light on the ocean’s stage. It was time for us to return to the boat. Time to return to my new home, my real home. Not the place where I was from, but the place where I was needed.

I wondered what Vince would select for our Christmas dinner.

Nat Benjamin lives in Vineyard Haven.