Before we start sailing around the world, Damon and I thought it would be a good idea to start with a small trip to get our feet wet. We rented a 30′ O’day to sail along the Indian River, near Merritt Island, Fl. for a three day, two nights trip .
The morning we left started out hectic – Damon had a deadline at work and had to go to the office (I cannot wait for these office trips to be over). Meanwhile, I was trying to get mini-man ready so we could leave once Damon got home. So much for plans – mini-man usually has his own ideas and they almost never align with mine.
After a crazy morning with mini-man, Damon came home and we started packing up the car. Long gone are the days were we can just pack up and leave in a few minutes. Now, I am usually with mini-man to make sure he is fed and happy, while Damon runs around the house to finish packing. I feel bad for him as I am the organized one in the family and hate seeing him stress out so much to get us ready. However, he did an amazing job and we were able to leave within a few hours.
Once we arrived, we called the rental place and they informed us that we had no fridge on this boat. He suggested getting a cooler if we wanted to keep thing cool (which of course is necessary when you are sailing in Florida in May). This put us behind schedule. Once we got on the boat and settled, we missed our opportunity to leave – in order to get to the river, we had to pass under two bridges and a lock, which could only be open at certain times. It took us two hours to get passed everything and didn’t make it to our destination until 7:00p. At this point, I am starving and needed real food. We anchored in historic Cocoa (not the beach, but the town) and headed in for dinner.
We had a pretty good night and woke up nice-n-refreshed. We were missing a few things for breakfast so Damon headed into town to get some supplies while I got mini-man ready for the day. After breakfast, we explored the town which happened to be hosting a craft fair in the middle of the town that spread out quite a bit. This gave us a chance to see a lot of the town and talk to the people, which made for a very relaxing afternoon.
At this point, the wind picked up so we hoisted the sail and headed further down the river. We ended up in Dragon Pointe and anchored for dinner. Since this was our last night, Damon wanted to start back as soon as possible. We sailed as long as we could, but we didn’t get far before we had to anchor for the night.
Our last day was rough. We were far away from the marina with hardly any wind, so we had to motor back (at a neck breaking speed of 5 mph). It wasn’t too bad at first since some of the wind kept us cool. The trouble started when we got to the river. It was high noon, hot, and there was no wind on the river. mini-man got hot very quickly and started crying. With no air conditioner on board, I kept him cool with cold wash cloths and feeding him. It got better when we got back to open water and wind, but that quickly went away when we had to go through the bridges again. By the time we got back to the marina we were all hot and hungry. As soon as we docked, I bee-lined it for air conditioning with mini-man to help cool him down. As soon as we got inside, he felt a lot better. It certainly was an adventure and we learned a lot:
- Balanced days: Don’t try to do to much in one day. It just makes things way to stressful.
- Be flexible: Plans change. Don’t do something just because that was how you planned it.
We learned a lot more. Check out our upcoming blog posts to see what we learned about ‘Sailing and Parenting’ and ‘What we are looking for in a sail boat.
Heartswell Adventures 