Palmyra Island

After enduring the Doldurms
And a month and a half at sea,
We were more than ready for
The sight of land.
The funny thing was
That we sailed
Most of the way around the island
Before we were sure
Which one it was.
The sextant tended to be
A somewhat dubious tool
For figuring out
Where we were
In the hands of
Sugar Baer and Doug Diamond.
The two could never quite agree
On where they thought we were.
As it turned out
We were at the island of Palmyra.
It is a tropical island
Just north of the equator
And south of Hawaii.
It was uninhabited then,
But the huts of those
Who once lived there
Could readily be seen
Amongst the palm trees
There along the shore.
It looked like
A fantastic place to explore
Especially with all the wrecks
Of ocean ships
That could be seen
Captured in its harbor.
In fact,
We almost added
One more ship to the toll
When we ran aground
About two miles off shore.
Apparently we missed the channel
Coming in and ended up
Stuck on a coral reef.
My brother and I
Wanted to go explore the island
And check out
Some of the other ship wrecks,
And actually started out
In that precarious little dingy
We jokingly called a lifeboat.
It became immediately clear,
However,
That there were a few problems
With that innocent plan.
First of all
The chances of making it to shore
Through the pounding surf
Were highly unlikely
In that unstable boat.
Second, assuming that we made it there
How would we get back?
Last but not least,
We observed numerous
Extremely large sharks
Including what looked to be
A fifteen foot hammerhead
Right beneath our dingy.
Wisdom got the better of valor
And we turned back to the boat.
The island was used as
An undersea burial site
For arms and munitions
Left over from World War II
Which in turn
Contaminated the local fish
Forcing the islanders to move.
As a consequence
The local waters
Had not been fished
For many years
And some of the fish
Had grown incredibly large
As we could readily see.
It took us most of the day
To work ourselves
Off the reef,
And some of us
Wanted to give the channel another try
But the Diamonds
Refused to try their luck again.
Generally most of us
Get where we are going
With some balance
Of luck and skill
But when skill is nonexistent
And your luck is horribly bad,
Then you will likely turn
And head the other direction
Just as they did!