Meandering thoughts of a sailor, traveler and foodie.: Skinny water sailing for dummies

Okay, now it's time for the next adventure of the day.

Spouse is review the charts and says, right before this channel marker you can cut through, we have plenty of depth.

Ha. HaHaHa. HardyHarHar.

So, trusting his chart reading skills--quoth the raven, nevermore--I proceed to do what he says. Then decide that the grounding of the boat will be while he's at the helm. Not I.

He takes over. Keeps going, I'm starting to see in startling clarity and HD reception some coral head and bottom.

Then, here we go, OH SHIT, hard left, hard left. That was 4 feet of water, NOT 6.

For once, I realized it would be wise that only one of us on board should be shitting mickies, so I kept relatively calm and started watching for potential grounding opportunities.

Okay, I was privately smirking to myself. At least I kept us in 15-20 feet of water with my stupid ass stunt. (of which I am STILL blaming RayAutopilot)

So we get out of a potential grounding situation and my darling spouse meekly proceeds to head through the proper channel to the Florida Bay side.

We found our anchorage and nailed it. And for once, the whole hand signal think worked, and didn't involve use of the middle finger hand signal.

And it was wondrous, the boat was SO STILL.

So, it's time to grill some steaks, have a drink and crash. (it was a 13 hour sailing day--I TOLD you I put forth an ambitious plan)

But, Sir Captain forgets that his duties entail maybe cleaning out the Magma once a decade (or in our case within the last 3 years). It's so clogged it won't start. Then the crack lighter will not work. Then, just because we hadn't had enough excitement in the last 2 hours, Spouse breaks out the butane torch from his tool box to light the grill. Oh Lordy, just let me swim to shore now.

Grill never lights. So grilled steak rapidly becomes Sauteed Filet Mignon d'HemiD. And I NAILED IT.

Also roasted my ass off down below. BUT I NAILED IT. Despite the Captain's attempts to coach my cooking technique, which was rewarded with some proper hand gestures of the middle finger, they turned out really well.

Of course, as soon as it's time for bed, the wind kicks up and starts howling. We never moved, but I just can't seem to get the sleeping under anchor down.

It also didn't help that some night fisherman decided that our anchor line was a great place to fish off of and not amusing Tim a'tall.

However, it was all worth it.