Day 8: Learning curve? How about learning WALL!

Before I begin, I'd just like everyone to know that we do NOT have mice in our current little bungalow space. At 6:00am today, Tyler announced to me that there were mice underneath the wicker drawers and they were getting into the beach bag.  This prompted a whole series of actions: my insistence that we purchase clorox wipes and I hand clean the floor, my asking the housekeeper to get some mouse traps- which prompted some strange looks and my being completely creeped out most of the morning. Then, this afternoon, we discovered that the little scratchy sounds coming from the beach bag were coming from this shell:

Actually- from the hermit crab that lives in this shell- whom we shall now call Hermie.  Apparently Hermie was not pleased that we transplanted him to a beach bag and was trying to make his way back to the ocean.  We have now returned him to a more appropriate environment....although I was kind of liking the idea of having a Hermie on the boat.

I return to the learning wall:

Back in Denver, the most common question that followed, "What are you guys going to do?" was, "Have you and Tyler sailed before?" or sometimes more of a statement: "Oh- so you and Tyler have sailing experience." 

The answer to that question/assumption is yes AND no:

Honestly- Tyler has some sailing experience. He sailed smaller boats as a teenager and in his early 20s.  He has operated both power and sail boats in not-so-easy conditions: in the Navesink and Shrewsbury rivers in New Jersey and off the coast of Florida.

I have no sailing experience.  This is not really a problem, however, just like when I started to teach Mariachi, there will be mistakes and messy moments on the way to amazingness. I'm okay with that and so is Tyler.  

Sailing experience is not really the issue when you are purchasing a sailboat, needing to motor it to a boat yard, haul it out of the water, survey, paint and fix it and then move aboard with (an awesome) 7-year-old and a dog within the next 5-7 days.   Tyler and I both vacillate between utter panic, being totally overwhelmed and knowing that all will be well...

Speaking of utter panic, remember when you were 15 and just had your learner's permit to drive?  And maybe, if you're like me, you talked your parents into letting you drive yourself to clarinet sectional rehearsal only to be stopped by a police officer within 30 seconds and then drive, crying, horrified and shaking back home.  

Well, in that same hopeless-newbie spirit, we went on a short family motor in our new boat today.  We decided to travel the same path up the Intracoastal Waterway that we had taken with Bonnie and Brian on Saturday.  We thought we would simply motor a while, practice anchoring, grill some food, and then head home. Somehow, when you are completely on your own in your boat for the first time, the clouds look more ominous, the current is stronger, the waterway becomes filled with sandbars and the engine sounds different. Tyler kept saying things like, "If we lose the engine, we're going to drift into a sandbar and have to get a tow," and, "I really hope that storm blows over."  I didn't want to move an inch out of the channel because, of course, we had no suitable charts on board and our collective recollection of Saturday's route was not as clear as we had thought.  So we headed back to the dock after about 30 minutes- and then came the moment of sheer terror.  It wasn't the weather, or a shark, or Zander going overboard (he was on his first boat ride today).  We had to dock the boat in the narrowest slip in the United States.  Yes it was the same slip we left earlier...yes we knew it was coming....yes we almost smashed our boat and/or the boat in the next slip....and no, I can't- even after almost 3 years of Crossfit- hold a 10,400 lb boat off a dock.  It was like slow motion parallel parking a space shuttle.

Nothing was smashed though. The boat is great- and we had reality handed to us.  Learning wall indeed.

Zander on board

No matter what happens, evening beach time makes everything ok.