Whew!!

So after our Little Flower meeting on Friday night, when Mikayla and I got home, we loaded up the car and headed down to the boat for the weekend.

and what a weekend it was.

We ran into some old friends from some of our other marinas.  One friend Jessee - she's quite the chatter box but we said hi and found out she works for Tow Boat now in dispatch and is loving it.

We then decided to take a nice ride - and as we were leaving our marina heading out, we saw Rodney (another friend from another marina) he works for tow boat, as a boat/rescue and he was towing a boat in. 

How funny to see our old friends!

So we go out and the weather just can't decide if it's going to be windy or not...so we motored out and then when we put our sails up - there wasn't any air to get us going so we had full sails up - which if you don't know is a LOT of sail area. 

when.....

ALL of a sudden, HUGE wind burst - HUGE waves - they were white capping.... OH HOLY COW!!!!  ACK!!!!

Phew.... we were recovering from that, totally had to reduce sail area which is very difficult and could be dangerous in those conditions, we were reset and ready to have a nice ride.

BOOM

One set of the lines blew out off of the sail so HOLY COW!  we just decided to drop all sails and go back in...it was just that off/weird.

Horrible conditions today.... so safety first and foremost, we headed back in.

when......

ALL of a sudden.... ALARMS are ringing all over the place and the motor is sounding horrible....so we shut it off and quickly pulled one of the sails back out...

So we're sailing, in not great conditions wind wise... and we can't really seem to get the boat where we want it to go.... it's as if mermaids were hanging on the keel and dragging us where they wanted us to go instead of where we wanted to go.

So, after nearly 17 years of sailing - we had to call for help and get a tow boat. 

So when Michael got them on the phone - guess who he talked to.... Jessee, the gal we ran into at West Marine earlier that day...

WOW!!!! 

So what started out as a fun day sail, became a long adventure!!  We just knew we couldn't make it where we needed to be - safely.

WOW!!!

So we sailed around while waiting for the tow boat to come get us, they hooked us up, towed us in and we made it into our slip at about 10:00 pm.  It took over 3 hours to get in.... whew!!

Now to get her fixed - we don't think it's anything major and better to happen now than when we go on our cruise vacation!

These pictures were of the silence after the massive winds, white cap waves and crazy motor issues.

I do wish we had been able to see the mermaids that were messing with us though because they sure made it a wacky day!!!!

The link below is what Mikayla looks like telling her side of the story starting at about 26 seconds to 43 seconds....

little mermaid