Vernon River

 

An absolutely breathtaking morning!

 

Today’s journey included traveling through Hell Gate.  A notorious tough, narrow channel in a large body of water with resulting swells and possible wind drift and to top it off – a MLW of 5 feet.  Which started me thinking about being afraid. 

Fear is something that is talked a lot about in the class we attend.  We expect to have scary moments and have tried to identify and mitigate, as best we can, our fears. Most people share similar fears.  We have had some good adrenaline rushes but here we are still motoring north. 

My biggest fear before we started would be lightning.  I had some real terrifying experiences with strikes too close to me while I felt vulnerable.  Not really a problem anymore.  We have heard stories of sailboats being struck and yes, it would be devastating, but not be fatal.  It might end our season sooner than planned but everything could be replaced.

Fear of being together 24/7.  We pretty much worked opposite shifts our entire marriage.  It worked better with the kids and meant I could be there for after school activities etc.  Covid changed that somewhat since Paul started working from home.  After a period of adjustment, it worked.  I figured the same would occur on the boat.  And the boat is big enough if we need to “walk” away for a few minutes.  We get off the boat where we can and interact with others.  We have had friends and family visit. 

Fear of being away from the kids and family.  Fear of missing out what is happening back at “home”.  The kids have been good at sending pictures and news.  We know that even if we had been in RI, chances are we would not have been present for everything anyway since we would have still been working.  We get to return home and spend time with them.  It’s not like we are on another planet.  And they all know they have open invitations to visit us. 

Fear of boredom.  So far so good.  I read, draw, paint, listen to music, cook, bake, plan trips, plan anchorages, take pictures, blog, watch movies.  Paul reads news, is learning cribbage, kicks my butt at high low jack, tinkers with stuff on the boat.  We explore areas when we can get on land.  We still attend classes twice a week.  Every morning, we set a goal.  Sometimes it is simple - get all the glue off my kitchen faucet which actually took a couple hours with acetone and elbow grease!  Other times it takes hours – motoring to the next anchorage. 

Fear of running aground.  This is a big one since the ICW has so many shallow spots.  We have become adept at planning around the tides.  It might mean a super early departure or later arrival than we typically like but better to be more relaxed through the journey.  We have brushed the ground a couple times.  The first we had only been on the boat a few hours and did not read the directions carefully!  Paul was able to back out of it.  Another time we just were not paying attention and wandered to the side of the channel.  (The deepest part of the river is not always in the middle!)  Oops.  Again, we got lucky and managed to float out of it.  The most recent time we were actually spinning around to dock and the current pushed us on to a shoal.  We floated off and were fine.  The lesson – PAY ATTENTION!

I am sure as we continue to head north there will be more scary episodes but we intend to be well versed in the weather, tides, shoals etc. 

Today’s pictures were abound with shallow shores, including birds that seemed to be walking on water.

And… “Fred” was waiting for us when we pulled into Vernon River!  We had set anchor and went inside to start decompressing and he started singing!  Of course I had to research the starling.  What I found is that the starling can be a symbol of hope or a reminder that something beautiful is always within reach.  I like both!

 

And I finished another book.  Check out on pages.