We can’t quite believe that Sea Venture remains on the hard after the waterspout damage to the marina in June, but there she sits. She pouts a bit. She doesn’t like the inattention to her appearance. She’s feeling old and ill-used.
Michael reminds her that he’s trying and that as soon as she’s waterborne again, we’ll massage her brightwork and make her shine.
In the meantime, we’re installing a bow thruster. Yes, we’ve fallen that far. No longer do we proclaim that as real sailors we will rely solely on good seamanship to slither into marinas. Understand, please, that here I use the royal “we” because all graceful slithering has been the job of Captain Michael. I’m the lasso artist who tosses the line and grabs the cleat. No, we do not jump down onto docks in an attempt to maim ourselves. Michael handles Sea Venture with professionalism, using skills perfected when he flew off aircraft carriers. He’s good. But sometimes the wind and the current force us to stay away from an unyielding dock, a trick we can’t employ as readily here as we could in our cruising days because good anchorages with enough deep water are few and far between. Here we’ll be motoring more as we travel up and down the ICW and will be staying in more marinas. We won’t have the luxury of waiting for the wind to die or the current to cooperate.
Hence, the new toy.
This is the tunnel. The thruster arrived damaged, so we’re awaiting a replacement. There’s always something. I should never have prayed for patience.
Very cool. Not that it arrived damaged but that you’re getting something to make you even more sea worthy. Sometimes we’ve got to bend from “the purist” category. Sometimes . . .
It is cool, Nicole. And bending from the purist will certainly give us the confidence to duck in next to those hard surfaces when we need to.
Oh, my. A cruiser who never prayed for patience would self-destruct in a frenzy of anxiety in less than a week. As you say, it is always something. Just curious where exactly you are, since you say you will be in the ICW. We are in Lake Worth. We are cruising Florida this year, but we stopped at Lake Worth and haven’t been able to motivate ourselves to move on yet.
Sea Venture is now in Beaufort, NC, having traveled from Mexico to Northern CA and back to Mexico (where we remained for a few years), then south, through the Panama Canal, and up the East Coast, all so that we could get home to take care of my mother when she asked that of us. She loves to sail, and as soon as SV is back in the water, we’ll do so. We probably won’t want to do much ocean cruising with her on board — unless for short hops in calm seas — though Mama has certainly been with us in some messy waters in the Sea of Cortez.
Michael put in to Key West and Miami, but said that FL has far too much skinny water for a boat that draws 6.5 feet. What is your draft? I understand the problem of finding a spot and not wanting to leave it. We felt that way about the Sea of Cortez, which was about as perfect a cruising ground as we could imagine. Still, there’s more to see and places we haven’t yet traveled.
We also draw 6.5 feet. We muse over the shallow water. However, we want to go out to the Dry Tortugas, a reprise of our first real cruise, with an instructor from Annapolis Sailing School in 1996. We peruse the charts with an eagle eye, and we won’t be doing any stunts such as slipping into close quarters at high tide. We don’t like the possible consequences of being trapped there by low tide. Cruising is about freedom, after all.
I honor you for your care for your mother. God blesses those who honor their parents, and clearly some of those blessings include your shared joy in being together. How great that she loves sailing.