Outside to Florida

Bob has taken to saying, lately, that the difference between an adventure and an ordeal is whether you’re a man or a woman. So when you’re 60 miles out at sea and the engine on your boat dies suddenly, for no apparent reason, filling the immediate area with huge quantities of thick steam that look, initially, a heck of a lot like smoke, and the diesel mechanic is seasick, as is the Captain, and the boat is pitching and rolling and the sails are flapping hard in the wind and nobody is telling stories or jokes anymore, but in fact have gotten very quiet, barking at each other in short terse bits if at all, that’s an adventure. At least that’s what the sailor boys tried to tell me when it was all over. Oh, did I mention it was at night? 8:00 at night, as a matter of fact; about as far away from daylight and the illusion of safety as you can get, this time of year. Adventure my ass.

Dolphins swimming in the water with the boat, sea turtles paddling peacefully by, the big sparkling ocean with absolutely nothing else in sight but the sun and the moon, sunrises and sunsets, moonrises and moonsets; all that was unquestionably lovely. Cooking below, in the cabin, was sometimes fun and rewarding (the sailor boys were always wonderfully polite and grateful for even a cup of hot coffee); but sometimes cooking was too hard—the movement of the boat too crazy and unpredictable for hot sloshing foods. The sailor boys were happy for real food when it appeared, and fine with foraging when it didn’t.

But for the ultimate difference in world views between the men on board and I, I offer the experience of my first shower at sea. We were two and a half days into the trip, and two of the sailor boys had already crossed back over into the world of personal cleanliness, bragging about how nice they smelled, how bad the rest of us did, etc. I saw the possibility of landfall in the next day or so, and thought I should prepare for it by getting clean as well. But here again we come up against the adventure/ordeal thing, because the two men who had gone before me on this quest did not think it significant enough to report that a shower at sea is best performed with four arms: two to brace oneself firmly into the walls on either side of the head, one to hold the shower nozzle (which is really just a vegetable sprayer from a kitchen sink, after all) and one to do the actual washing, which, if you don’t concentrate, you could easily forget is, by the way, the reason you’re in this situation in the first place-- to wit, wet, naked, your feet soapy and slipping out from under you, one good wave away from careening through the flimsy louvered door you’ve wedged your elbow against and flying out into the main cabin of a sailboat full of “adventurers!”

The statistics: the trip was a few hours less than four days; 485 nautical miles. We averaged 5.16 knots, about 6 MPH. The temperature when we left North Myrtle Beach, SC was 25 degrees, and today in North Palm Beach, FL, it's 78. We are very grateful to Kevin, Frank and Bob, aka the Sailor Boys, for their knowledge, patience, good humor and willingness to help us stay safe on this sailing adventure, and to our friend Steven, who has helped us find our new temporary home and made us feel welcome in Florida.

PS The unidentified legs in the photo above belong, once again, to Bob-- Captain and  seasick mechanic, one and the same, looking for a replacement part necessary to make one of two crucial engine repairs needed during the trip.