Maiden Voyage

Well, she doesn't yet have a NEW name, so the WHOLESOME went out on her maiden voyage on Thursday afternoon. It was a beautiful day with temperatures in the upper 60s, and winds from 8 to 12 out of the southwest. Conditions were perfect, not a cloud in the sky and steady wind; what more could any sailor want? I had a great crew consisting of Phil and Antonio, both of whom had worked with me in the bounce house business over the years and were anxious to give it a go. Phil had never sailed before, but Antonio had sailed in Spain where he lives. He played soccer at Wm. Woods which seems to be the connection between myself and most of the international guys that I am privilaged to meet. Tony knew his way around a boat, and Phil was anxious to learn. The boat handled beautifully and all of the work that I had put into her over the past two weeks turned out to be worth it. We averaged well over 5 knots in sailing the 23 miles to Phil's subdivision, where there is a dock for us to moor up to and then return on Friday. One small problem arises. Although their is probably 10' of water at the dock there is only about 3' of water in most of the areas of the Choctawhatchee Bay in the approach to the dock, we draft 4'. We went aground on several occasions attempting to get to the dock, we kept trying but to no avail. We had sailed to the bayou in 3-1/2 hrs but spent 5 hrs. either trying to get to the dock or leaning the boat over to get off the botton. 9:00p.m. arrives and we finally decide to take 3-hour watches to insure that we don't get run over and also to keep an eye out for friendly boaters whom might be able to get us off of the sandbar; Phil gets the 9-midnight, Tony midnight-3, Carl 3-6. It's 9:13pm and Phil yells, there's a boat out there! I get my trusty flashlight (6 bright LEDs and a very powerful light) and put the old Boy Scout training to use. I only hope they can see us! Suspensful shit, Huh! Three longs, three shorts, and then three longs again, then again, and again. Finally, a response from a couple of guys with a big flat bottom fishing boat with a 200 HP Yamaha outboard on her. They were a godsend. They took Phil to shore to get the gas for our vessel because we had exhausted our supply while getting off of sandbars, brought him back and got us off of anothersandbar we had encountered while waiting on them. They ended up towing us to deep water, two great guys and a strong boat. They refused any type of payment just insisting that we help someone else out when we get a chance. Consider that a promise.

We motored around to a marina at the upscale place where Phil and Courtney used to live, tied up the boat, went to their house slept until 8 the next morning, and then Tony and I brought her back to Legendary Marina. It was a beautiful trip back and everything went well. It always does when the sun is up. There's something about darkness that makes it all more difficult on the water, or more challenging whichever your perspective is. Phil didn't make the return trip, he got a dose of the stomach flu Thursday night and was up all night long. He missed a great day.

I have a few job opportunities which I hope to land next week, will have more on that Monday.

That's about it from here for now, but I am entertaining names for the vessel, do any of you have any ideas?

Until next time, Bon Voyage