Ordinarily we wait for minimal to no wind. For some reason, not today. Ordinarily we check the timing and direction of whatever current we’ll face. For some reason, not today. Today, we cheerfully said goodbye to Bruce and Bev on one side and the Eclipse sailboat boys on the other side and sallied forth.
Within about sixty seconds we felt foolish. And cold. Gray skies, harsh wind, cold temperature. Folks from, say, Minnesota, probably thought it was nice out. But we’re from Arizona. We hate gray and windy and cold. Dana bundled up in sweatpants, a fleece jacket, fuzzy socks, AND a blanket.
What’s worse than cold and wind and gray? All those things for about twice as long as expected, which happens when you plow a heavy deep-draft boat against the current we forgot to check. We’re morons.
After three hours or so of freezing and whining about freezing, it finally hit us. What the @#!% are we doing on the flybridge? We have a warm and sealed pilothouse, whose entire purpose in life is to provide comfort when the flybridge is uncomfortable. Yup, we’re morons. Just like we waited until we were weak from blood loss during The Great Lake Ontario Fly Invasion before we thought to retreat. You’d think four thousand some miles later we’d be smarter. Nope, we’re still morons.
But hey, it could be even more worse. We could be Miss Melissa.
The real Miss Melissa likely was touched when her man named his boat after her, like Forrest and Jenny. Then came the ugly break-up, after which he decided to just let her rot along the shore as some sort of metaphorical revenge for the way she did him wrong. So sad.
The tows around here are rare, but somehow they know to find the narrow channels just when we need to pass.
Dana caught another heron.
Brent and Karen on Second Wave gave glowing reports about River Dunes so we headed in.
Brent mostly judges marinas by the quality of the bathrooms, of course, but often that’s a pretty good barometer.* There’s even a chapel staring us in the face. We contemplated popping in and confessing to being morons, but if we start down that road we’ll not have time for much else.
The sun finally glanced through the clouds for a minute or two, but even better was confirming that Brent and Karen are going to come cruise the Chesapeake with us.
We’re staying here tomorrow. Belhaven on Wednesday. Unless it’s gray and cold and windy, in which case we’ll probably go—and sit out in it—anyway.
____________
* That’s not even a joke. Brent just sent us a picture of the River Dunes shower he took when Second Wave stopped off here last year. Dude’s a straight-up connoisseur. Generally we like Misty Pearl’s shower better than what they offer us at marinas. This one had 360° of steam, however, so absolutely was photo-worthy.
You gave me some good chuckles with that entry. Nice to know we are not alone in our questioning of our intelligence from time to time.
The really embarrassing stuff we keep to ourselves and hope nobody else noticed.