Answers: a) No. Because I can see in the dark and he can't. b) It was considered, but safe arrival, awesome docking job and a few drinks settled him down.
What did sweet little ole me do? I suggested that we blow all the way home and not stop at Boca Grande. We'd only have a little night sailing to do (oh, and entering our channel.)
He okayed it and off we went. And it got dark. Really, really dark. And he started freaking out. I'm at the helm, I have got a good grasp on all the ATONs and anything else that might be out there. The shrimp boats are lit up like Christmas so I know I won't have to worry about them.
But he can't handle it, he goes down below to....evidently second guess what I am doing. Flies back up, blinds me with the iPad and says YOU ARE HEADING TOWARDS SHALLOWS.
Sigh. Thanks for destroying my night vision. It'll only take 20 minutes to get that back and we are 10 minutes away from the channel.
Also, ASK ME WHAT I AM DOING. I was navigating back to our course to the channel waypoint, but you are looking at your Navionics on the iPAD that has a 5nm lead line to it. I was over a nautical mile from where it even got to 12 ft. SHEESH.
Squabble #1 ensues. Me: Stop distracting and blinding me. Him: YOU NEED TO HAVE INFORMATION! (he was not his normal self at this point)
I see our channel marker (which um....floats, not on a piling at the moment) then I realize....oh crap, where is our track from when we head out? Oh, shit just got a lot more difficult.
So Tim completely wigged out by now turns the boat away from the channel and I run down to get our high power spot light and our radio sets. Now this is going to be a true test of marital communications and relations now.
Tim throws some way points to line us up with the channel, I get positioned on the bow and start doing a sweep of the area because I know there's 3 anchored boats and also, the channel splits in two and we need to head....left. (we didn't)
Squabble #2 over headsets ensues about how stupid this is and he should have never agreed to this.
Once again, the scop must have been working overtime because I am still pretty chill about this.
Tim, slow down, and remember the two things we've learned.
"Don't approach anything faster than you want to hit it."
"The difference between an ordeal and an adventure is attitude. So let's have an adventure."
He wasn't amused.
So, now the scene is set. Tim on helm, dodger completely caked over with salt spray (not that it mattered). Kim seated on the bow with the spotlight. Pitch black. Oh, and the chartplotter is over zoomed.
So below is a little graphic on how it went.
 |
| Read the events corresponding to the letters below. Red line represents our path. |
B- Kim: Um, Tim. Did you miss the turn off? Tim? I think we are not going the right way.
Tim: OH SHIT. We are heading to the Navy Base. Hold on, I'm going to turn around.
Kim: Wait, let me check. Nevermind.
Tim: Up here I am going to turn the nose of the boat to what I think is our channel marker. Let me know when you find it.
Kim: WHAT? There. There it is one o'clock.
Tim: I can't see shit.
Kim: Watch your depth, veer starboard a little bit until I tell you to stop. Wait. What was that?
Tim: We grounded. Let me get the keel all the way up. We're good!
C- At this point, we have the seeing eye dog routine down. Feeling better, seeing more lights. Tim's freakout is now about DEFCON 3. and then....
D--Kim: Here's the entrance.
Tim: Where?
Kim: HERE. HERE. Markers 1 & 2.
Tim: There?
Kim: Yes. Wait. No. Just go straight!!
Tim: I don't think we should.
Kim: (shines light in water) It's deep enough! Go now!
And by the hair of our chinny chin chin. We slid through the shallows into the nice deep marina.
So to explain that last bit. I told Tim there's the entrance markers to the marina. He started turning, not sure what he was looking at. I started getting very concerned that he'd want to back up or something and the current would pin us up against the channel marker. So, I told him to go. Luckily, it was high tide, the boat keel was up making us draw 3.25 feet and we slipped in with most likely millimeters to spare. Not the best move, but I did fear the worst.
If we had grounded, we figured out later, the boat doesn't list. The keel goes up in the trunk and we have a skeg in front of the prop. We wouldn't have just sat flat bottomed like jackasses waiting for SeaTow to come. We were going slow so we wouldn't have got damaged. Just our ego.
We show up at our slip (after being completely fried I thought there was another boat in it--our marina has been known to do that) and completely nail our docking with the help of the guy chartering the Jeanneau next to us.
Big smile to Tim--see? I knew we could do it.
He is still not amused.
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