I kicked up through the murky water, my lungs screaming for air, and burst to the surface, gasping. The brown, algae-filled water was replaced by blue, blue sky. Heart pounding, I floated for a few minutes, getting my bearings. The boat rocked gently in the waves, fifty yards away. Slowly, I kicked my way towards it.

The Mexican deck hands helped me onto the boat and brought me a towel. They didn’t understand much English, and only frowned when I repeated, again and again, “No Air!” and motioned to the tank now lying on the deck at my feet.

They checked the pressure gauge and shrugged. “All Okay!” they repeated. I shook my head.

Finally, the man who was in charge appeared beside me. I told my story. He carried the air tank away. “Perhaps the gauge is not working?”

Bingo! Gauge not working, plus, the tank had no air in it. Would I like to try another? A quick search revealed no extra tanks on board.  I sat on the deck, wrapped in a towel, for the remainder of the hour dive time.

The ‘boss’ suggested we talk with the office on dry land about returning my $25 dive fee once we got back to land. We did, and the company returned the $25 fee with little argument.

Chad had a nice dive. Despite the murky water where we were ‘dropped in’, he found the reef and saw some beautiful fish. (Good for him.)

I didn’t have much to say that evening. And I was not hungry. Thursday was our big fishing day. We went to bed early, so we could get up early and have a gi-normous breakfast before shipping out for a glorious day of deep sea fishing. Look out marlins!

We ordered full plate breakfasts: a huge burrito stuffed with egg, sausage, cheese, green peppers, onions and more. Plus fried potatoes, black beans, posole and a side of pancakes. Then, we gathered our gear and caught the shuttle from the hotel to the dock to meet the fishing boat.

Gray skies hovered above us, and as we rode the mile to the dock, rain fell. We arrived to find waves crashing up and over the dock.

“The tide is coming in, that is all,” one of the Mexican men said to me when I expressed concern.

Chad looked up at the sky. “It will blow over,” he said with a shrug as he checked out the buckets of live bait we would be using.

Apparently two other couples had signed up to go fishing with us. One couple didn’t show. The other showed up, took one look at the pounding waves and requested their money back. “The sea is too rough,” they said.

I looked at Chad. He shrugged. “It’ll get better when we’re outside the bay, and when the tide begins to flow out.”

I considered the gray sky and the dense clouds as well as the white-capping waves slamming into the dock and our fishing vessel. The three deck hands grinned at one another. “Is okay!” they repeated.

At departure time, rain pounded down, splashing into the ocean like BB pellets. Chad and I climbed into the rocking boat, and were ushered into the cabin. We sat side by side on the built-in bench, staring forward out the windows. We shoved away from the dock and out into rough waters. I held onto the edge of the bench with clenched fingers.

With every crash of the waves and pitch of the boat as it rose and fell on the rough seas, my full-to-the-brim stomach, let me know I had just made a baaaad decision. Very bad.

(Come back for the final installment of “Honeymoon from Hell” on Friday!)

Want more stories? Check out http://www.amazon.com/author/MaryColey to see all of my books! The next story featured on my blog will be one of the stories from my Naked Ladies anthology of short stories.