Step right up, ladies and gents! Do you want a peaceful mode of transportation that relies only on the quiet and gentle breeze that blows your hair back as you lounge majestically like a bronzed goddess on the deck of your sailing vessel?...Yeah, so do I.
Instead, I have found that sailing isn't as peaceful as I thought it would be. It's a lot of hard work, but so far, I still want to keep the damn thing. After this weekend, though, it's starting to look more like Stockholm Syndrome than dedication to our new hobby. This wiley boat has wormed its way into our hearts and even an experience like the one I'm about to describe has not yet sent us running for our axes to chop the thing into tiny pieces (although the thought has crossed my mind, many, many times. It's probably a good thing that I don't actually have an ax that I could run for).
This weekend, I had finally convinced a friend of mine that her motion sickness would not be activated by our little darling. This statement proved to make me a liar for two reasons: 1. There was absolutely no wind, so we had to motor the entire way, and 2. The engine was acting up, so it took forever. Even though we weren't on a very bumpy ride, it was a much longer ride than anticipated and so my friend ended up catching a cab back to her hotel instead of the sail back with us to avoid covering us with the partially digested contents of her lunch. (Thanks friend!)
Wouldn't you know it, we had great wind on the way home! Instead of the 2+ hours it took us to get there, it only took 45 minutes to get back. AWESOME. One problem: the giant, black clouds that seemed to be rolling in at an alarming rate. Even though we knew the tide was going to be pretty low, which would result in the water being too shallow for us to make it in our boat slip without getting stuck...we decided to risk it. About 50 feet from our dock, the boat stops moving. The engine is "I think I can-ing" its little heart out but we are not going anywhere. Then, the little engine that couldn't started making an unusual noise. Ryan makes a funny face and says calmly, "That's not good"...I don't know anything about engines, so I'm thinking, okay, maybe some seaweed got in there (We're in the St. John's River, pretty sure we don't have seaweed but whatever) but apparently when Ryan says "Not good" what he reallys means is: THE FRICKIN PROPELLER FELL OFF THE ENGINE INTO THE KNEE DEEP SILT THAT COVERS THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER.
Side note: When we renamed our boat, we dumped a whole lot of champagne into the water for the renaming ceremony PRECISELY so that these things would not happen. The gods of wind and water have totally ripped us off.
We pull up the engine to see that, yes, we no longer have a propeller, so our engine is now useless. We both kind of laugh these crazy little laughs and nervously look at the lightning and blackness that is now closing in on us. (Maybe a little overdramatic, the storm was actually pretty mild in terms of wind and waves...but I have no idea what happens to the occupants of a sailboat when lightning hits the mast, do you?)
It starts sprinkling and then full on bucketing water at us, so we decide we should probably get in the cabin to stay dry. This would have worked out pretty well if it weren't extremely hot and stuffy in the cabin. I thought taking my chances with the rain would be more comfortable, so I made my way back up to the top. At some point, Ryan joins me and then promptly theorizes that if he jumps in the water, he could pull us to the boat slip. I should have realized that his brain was addled with storm fever, but it seemed like an okay idea at the time. He jumps in and...stands up. The water is currently so shallow that he can stand. In knee deep silt, but still standing. He pulls the boat as hard as he can for a while, which amuses a few of our neighbors who are now out in their yards taking pictures and asking us to "Smile" and calling Ryan a "Hero". I'm not sure "Hero" is the word, but it is pretty entertaining to watch a human trying to pull a very heavy sailboat through the mud.
Eventually, one of our neighbors offers to come get us in his canoe. I jump at the chance to escape the boat until the tide comes back in and we can move the ol' girl, but Ryan thinks it's best to keep pulling the boat (which has not moved since he began). Feeling quite smug and proud of myself for escaping the situation and being the clear intellectual in this situation, I walk to our condo once I reach solid ground. I make it all the way to our front door before I realize that my keys are in the boat. (I have also forgotten my sandals on the boat. Did I mention that I walked barefoot through our condo complex barefoot, drenched, and generally looking like a vagabond?)
I slowly make my way back to the dock, kicking anything that won't hurt my bare feet and muttering the whole way about "that stupid, frickin boat". Ryan is still doing his he-man thing but when he sees me, he gets on the boat, grabs a few beers in a sail bag, and holds the bag in his teeth as he swims on his back to the dock. He looked like a little sea otter but instead of shells on his belly, he had a sack o' beer. I want you to picture that for a moment and tell me that I did not marry well.
We thank our new canoe hero friend and head back to our place for a few hours to relax while the tide comes in. Around 8:30 pm, freshly scrubbed and in dry clothes, we make our way back to the boat. Ryan again leaps into the water in his t-shirt and board shorts, grabs a rope and, like a half-man/half-fish or MerMan, he quickly has our sailboat pulled to the dock. From there it was simply a matter of moving it into its slip and spending many hours cleaning the black silty mud off the ropes, sails and deck (Our canoe neighbor friend pointed out to us that the silt was somewhat similar to, pardon his French, "warm shit").
Still want a sailboat?
