A boating adventure.

In Michael's words...

"What a day Saturday was beautiful out on the ocean 4 to 6 foot rolling seas 15 to 20 knot winds. Funny at one point the boat was hauling a$$ but we were going backwards 2 knots.  We are still learning about the tides and currents in the ocean, our 3 hour voyage actually took 8 but the sunset and day were so worth it!

I love this picture of my MIL - she had SUCH a good time!!!

We were riding along - the winds were really great, perfect distance between swells so it wasn't a ton of work but a great ride.

Our adventure started with a bit of a kufuffle getting out of the slip, we are able tie two stern lines and the 2nd stern line is really far from the dock side...so as we leave (in the past, remember this is a new marina and our first time pulling out with that 2nd stern line tied) and in trying to get out and hang the line so it's not in the water, we ended up having to fend off of the boat next to us, all but hit the cement dock, broke the handle with the hook on it that we use to hang the line and the line went in the water anyway...... it was a total disaster getting out of the slip.  I was thinking yay, we got the day's kufuffle out of the way.....

OHHHHH what a GREAT ride.... we were going SOOOO fast ..... well there was a reason for that...we were on a tack (going the direction we were) for about 30 minutes.... we made it really FAR.... really FAST!  So we turned back....

After about 40 minutes into that turn....Michael realized we were not moving....rather we were slipping backwards (because the buildings on the shoreline were not moving, we should be passing them by now).... the waves we had been "riding" for that time.... were just that...we were riding the waves and the rip tides UNDER the water were pulling us a totally different direction....BACKWARDS!  So what took 30 minutes to go one way, took over four hours to get back to the original starting point (which was still pretty far out). 

Now granted it was a GREAT ride...but we were beginning to wonder if we were going to make it back in by night fall.  So we turned the motor on to help us head back, phew so now we're motor sailing to fight that current.

Finally we were making progress when the motor ALARMS started ringing.... and it was not a good sound.  The motor overheated!! WHAT THE HECK!!!  so we shut the motor off, continued to sail until we got closer to where we needed to be before turning them back on again.  Phew, it all worked out very well in the end and we had a flawless dock (thank goodness) but wow it was truly eye opening and shocking how strong the rip tides are, it took our 12,000 lb boat and acted like it weighed nothing!!!  Total respect for the sea!!!  I'm so glad we don't ever take chances out there because seriously - we'd lose!

Mikayla had a great time and managed to even catch a cat nap, sitting up, leaning on me.....I loved it!  She has napped more times in the great outdoors on the boat than we can even begin to count.

It was an amazing sunset!  I couldn't pick my favorite picture so I have a lot below.

 

More weekend fun to come!!.....