BAHAMA SNOW

The blazing June sun was three hours above the Bahama horizon when Morgan Early opened the salon door to his 60' sportfishing boat Escapade and ushered the bikini clad brunette into the cockpit.  The thick tropical air grasped at their skin, cool from the air conditioning inside.

A rising tide flooded the Bimini harbor with ocean water so clear the dock pilings, fish and bottom detritus were plainly visible in the twelve foot depth.  Just past the deep-water channel in front of the docks of the Big Game Club, the shallow flats known as The Great Bahama Bank, so incongruously plopped in the ocean just fifty miles off Florida's shore, stretched east one hundred miles before bumping into the Berry Islands and Andros at their other extremity.

“It's unbelievably beautiful,” gushed Tracy Holcombe.  “I've never seen water so clear.”

“I love it, too,” acknowledged Morgan.  “I never tire of looking at it myself.”

“I don't want to leave.  Let's stay.  Let's stay forever,” Tracy declared as she sidled up to him, rose up on her bare toes, flung her arms around his neck and kissed him passionately on the lips.  Morgan could detect a hint of flowers in her freshly shampooed hair.

He returned the kiss and thought, sure, why not? Become a Conchy Joe, bum the islands with Tracy, or somebody, fish all day, make love all night.  But the thought passed quickly.  He broke the embrace, and Morgan felt compelled to acknowledge her words.

“It's a fabulous thought, Tracy.  Tempting.  But you have a job and I have charters this week . . .”

“I know, I know.  Reality,” she sighed.  “It's just that I've been so happy these last two days.  I don't want it to end.”

And Morgan had been happy too.  At least he had enjoyed himself.  Who wouldn't with Tracy?  He looked at her, stretched now on the covering board of the cockpit, her firm legs smoothly ascending to her scant bikini bottom which just hid a petite triangle of closely cropped pubic hair.  Her brown eyes smiled beneath the Marlins baseball cap as her lips pursed around straight white teeth.   Her tanned skin glowed in the piercing rays of the sun, the beams dancing through her tossled hair.

“Getting ideas, Morgan?” she purred.   “What's it been, half an hour since your last piece of ass?”

“God, Tracy, you tempt me.  You really do,” Morgan replied.  “But we've got two and a half hours back to Palm Beach, and I've got things to do this afternoon before tomorrow's charter.”

“Yeah, and don't forget about your hockey game tonight,” she mock pouted.   “Got to save your strength for that.  There goes our date tonight!”

In truth, there was no date for the night, but Morgan elected to keep silent on that matter.  And he was looking forward to the game.  Ice hockey was one of his passions that thankfully he could indulge twice a week since the opening of the rink a few years ago.

“I'm going to check out of the marina.  Make sure everything's put away in the galley and head,” said Morgan as he lightly stroked one of Tracy's legs before jumping to the dock and heading for the office.  She responded by hopping off the covering board and flashing a white buttock at him on her way into the salon.

Morgan paused a little way down the dock to gaze back at his boat.  We really got this one right, he thought, recalling back four years earlier when he had hired Rich Scheffer to build Escapade.  And now Rich was busy selling boats as fast as he could build them under the Tribute brand.

After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1990, Morgan had served his six-year tour as an officer in the United States Marine Corps.  That year, 1996, he chuckled in reflection, his blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he pushed his blond hair back behind his ears and resumed walking to the dock office, had been unbelievably lucky.  Thinking about the fledgling Internet that seemed to be on everybody's mind those days, Morgan had tried to visualize a way to make money from the whole phenomenon.  With thousands of domains entering the arena daily, how could any single entity hope to ever be found.  Addresses, he concluded.  Addresses that people would remember and that would be descriptive of what the site offered.

And so Morgan had registered six domains with the most sexually explicit and graphic titles he could conceive.  And he waited.  Within a month he had declined to sell each of the sites several times over until he finally was offered a package deal from a group in Los Angeles for $2,750.00.  This offer he didn't refuse.

Moving to South Florida to escape the dreary winters in the north, Morgan gravitated to the ocean and discovered a love of deep-sea fishing.  And that's when he decided to give his new friend Richie the opport