Reid's Travels

The true confessions and real adventures of a professional travel writer—bizarre stories, amazing characters, and comic mishaps that never make it into the guidebooks

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Broken boats, injured crews, and other brushes with death: Day 1 of the 116 summer sailing trip, 2010

Sailing: Day 1

Key Largo to Rodriguez Key. [Repeat]


Our 41-foot Hunter was called Blue Moon, but we nicknamed it "The Camry," because on two separate occasions we found ourselves in a situation in which we could sail it just fine… we just couldn't make it stop.

First day out, we got a late afternoon start because the tides trapped us in the Key Largo Marina. To relieve the boredom of waiting, I arranged to be nearly brained by the anchor of a hanging boat.

In which we almost lose one boat (and I almost die) before we even get out of the marina

Blue Moon was a whole lot bigger than Captain Rhoad’s own boat, a 29-footer (I believe) he keeps on the Chesapeake. So I don’t blame him. He was being forced to get the hang of this gargantuan new boat in a terribly narrow marina channel, in a blasted rush, with the locals yelling at him to hurry up, and at full speed.

This is because, though we had been told we'd be stuck in the marina until 5pm or 6pm waiting for the high tide to open an exit, no one had mentioned that the fuel station, which we had to visit before setting off and which lay just a few hundred yards down at the end of the marina, would be closing at 5pm.

By 4:30pm, we had just started loading our gear and a week’s worth of food onto the boats (most of it was still in the parking lot, being staged and divided between the Blue Moon and our other boat, a 36-foot Pearson called Stargazer), when someone from the fuel station wandered up and warned us of their imminent closure.

We started frantically slinging gear on board both boats. In the process, some people’s personal gear ended up on the wrong boat, other bits were misplaced for the duration, and a few pieces managed to get lost entirely.

Every five minutes or so, the fuel jerks would swing by to remind us of the ticking clock in nasty tones.


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