Yesterday, we were so fortunately lucky in a terribly unlucky way.
The day started great, we woke up happy and refreshed for the first time since our trip north; two-week passages are a lot of work. Then we arrived in Maine and had to haul the boat out for work and our insurance survey. We had a variety of projects, but the hardest was that we sanded and painted the bottom of the boat again. Despite me promising myself I would never. Never say never… but that’s another story.
Yesterday was the perfect day. We went over to the gracious hosts of Beal’s Lobster Pier to take care of some office work. Afterwards, we were going to head to the boat store for a few items to finish some projects we had aboard, and then pass out flyers at The Flamingo Festival here in Southwest Harbor Maine. The sun was shining, and the people at Beal’s were the best! Children were playing in the office as their parents finished work; it was the quintessential day of good all around.
As I was finishing up our new banner Nicholas said, “Hey, how about I run home and grab our credit cards before we head off to this festival?”
I thought for a moment and although I had said the same thing only about an hour before I said, “No, I think the cash we have will be fine. But you know we could go to the festival tomorrow as we already missed the parade today?”
“Then, how about we skip the festival, go tomorrow, and we can go grab the boat right now to refill the water and put the old banner up for the dinner rush while we’re on the dock?”
I wasn’t finished with the new banner and if you know me I hate leaving a project halfway through, but I promptly shut the computer without even saving my work or shutting it down to save battery consumption like I normally do. I simply said, “Yes, let’s do that right now.” We quickly packed up our bag and headed to the dinghy.
As we rode out to Manukai in silence we took in the absolutely stunning, productive day we were having. The sun was shining on the calm flat waters and fluffy white clouds speckled the sky contrasting against the vibrant blue to create the perfect New England seascape.
I climbed aboard Manukai and I went below to ready the ship to go to the town dock as Nicholas secured the dinghy.
“Shana, can you come up here for a second?” Nicholas called out as I shut the last window.
“One sec.”
I climbed out of the companionway and asked, “What’s up?”
“Are we drifting or am… I mean we’re tied to the ball, I’ve confirmed that… But we’re drifting aren’t we?”
I scanned our surroundings quickly, “The mooring must have broken!”
We sprang into action.
We started the motor and turned on all the switches and chart plotters. We’re still not fully knowledgeable as to where all the deep water ends and the rocks begin here. And the tide was rushing us towards those hard pointy Maine rocks.
So, if we hadn’t gone home at that exact moment, if we had chosen to finish our projects, or to go to the festival or just took 5 minutes longer than we did, we would have come back to our boat and our home on the rocks…
Terrible things happen in this world every day, but I like to think that maybe, somehow, someway, they can still turn out alright…
Especially if we’re willing to make it so and always help those who end up on the even unluckier side of the event… For it could always be us next…