Remember that time James, Caleb, and I were supposed to turn into sailors but fevers and nausea overtook the boys and we missed out on a private passage to Camden, Maine? Me too (If you haven’t read that tale yet, here it is). Well, we finally experienced our maiden voyage last week, and I am here to tell you that I took my job as the one who should get knocked out by Dramamine very seriously. As a precautionary measure, the preventative pill competed very well against the three to five foot seas we traveled in, and although the container’s label claimed the medicine was “non-drowsy”, I think my conked out, sprawled out form on the salon bench told a different story. Meanwhile, Danny did an amazing job at the helm, guiding the boat around buoys, away from the path of other vessels, and into the marina at Martha’s Vineyard. 

Normally, one wouldn’t share their diary with the world, but I thought it might be fun to share a few of my entries from the trip, giving you more insight, as if you need it, to what goes on in my brain. My journaling leaves a lot to be desired since I usually just write a sentence or two, so that weeks later when I read it back, the memory that should have been jarred by it is lost forever and it’s super fun to see if I can recall the event. 

Without further ado:

July 1: 

*What is the one thing you cannot bring on a boat? (if you guess in the comment section, I’ll let you know if you are correct)

*Freckled cutie and golden-haired beauty

*It’s a beautiful day to be seasick.

July 3:

*Buoyant, wild, semi-aquatic mammals, but no ocean life spotted. Are there even animals in this ocean or is it just a conspiracy?

July 4:

*The amount of crewing I’m doing for this man is rapidly amassing. First, I pushed two buttons. Then, I pushed two more. After that, I pulled back on the throttle so we wouldn’t collide with another boat. Post that wild ride, I used the boat hook to grab our mooring line up out of the ocean and then tied it to the bow cleat. 

*Okay, this is getting out of hand. I just tied off the dinghy. Not once, but twice! If Danny’s not careful, I’ll be taking that title, “Captain”, from him before long.

July 5:

*Today, I convinced my seventy-year old knees they could jump from the boat to the dock by yelling out encouraging phrases like “anchor’s away!” and “all hands on deck!” and “Who’s the landlubber now, huh?” so I could tie the stern line to a side cleat. Then I ran up to the end of the dock to catch the bow line James threw to me so I could tie off up there.

I know I’m using some nautical lingo, so I’ll help you out. The takeaway here is that I essentially docked the boat. I definitely didn’t almost electrocute myself by dropping our electrical cord into the water while hooking it up to the docking station.   

*Oh yeah, turns out there are other fish in the sea. Saw whales, dolphins, and even a shark, despite cruising through so. much. fog. 

All in all, it was a great and successful first voyage for me and the little boys. I won’t say Danny didn’t have an amazing time with us as his crew, but I will say that we came home a day earlier than planned. I’m fairly positive it had nothing to do with that one time he purposely fashioned a knot in a line for fitting around the wooden piling to keep the boat from bashing into the platform as we were docking in high wind and strong current, but I thought the line was, well, knotted and untied it (don’t worry, he came rushing back to to fix it and grab the piling before we hit anything). Or the time one of the boys broke the handle off a window (don’t worry, ‘we’ reattached it right away). Or when grape jelly was spilled onto the cockpit (don’t worry, it was cleaned up as best a young boy could). Unfortunately for Danny, he’s stuck with these barnacles for awhile because we love him and wouldn’t want him to boat alone. 😀

p.s. I’m sorry for these larger-than-life photos. Working with WordPress’s capabilities is rough, to say the least, not to mention how poor my own inabilities are when it comes to tech stuff . You can either have the pictures literally in your face, or as small as a thumbnail. Anything in-between is beyond my scope and Isaac immediately found something else to do when I started asking him for assistance…Enjoy the giant window into our lives!