Summer Vacation

My husband decided to book a sailing trip over summer vacation. That would help us decide if it was something we could handle. He decided a catamaran was the best choice for me to help alleviate many of my fears. We flew to Florida, and learned to sail over a week in July. I’ll be honest, the entire trip sucked. It sucked for reasons completely unrelated to the reasons we were doing it, but it still sucked.

The boat was older, and had no screens. My poor daughter was so eaten up with mosquitoes by the end of the trip, that I was afraid they wouldn’t let her on the airplane home thinking she might have chicken pox! Our captain (Captain Arno) was a complete ass. He took the best cabin with the best bathroom. Our bathroom stunk the whole trip. Captain Arno provisioned the boat not taking children into account at all. Needless to say, there was a serious lack of food for a growing boy. While Captain Arno ‘technically’ taught my son and I to sail, it was very minimal to say the least. He taught us just enough to ‘check the box’, and then moved on. When provisions began to run out, and my son was reduced to peanut butter and honey sandwiches, the man actually hid the honey fearing my son would use it all and it couldn’t be used in the man’s nasty coffee! There were thunderstorms every single day. The thunderstorms were the only ‘wind’ we got to sail in. Otherwise we spent the whole trip ‘motor sailing’. The bay we were sailing in looked like nasty pond water (forget swimming, let alone snorkeling). We would anchor everyday without ever getting a chance to use a dinghy to go ashore. Showers were impossible with a strange man about (at least for us girls). Captain Arno finished everyday with his phone in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. There was plenty of booze for him, but no food for us. At one point my daughter and I went up top at 5:30am (to escape the mosquitoes in her cabin) and entertained the thought of grabbing a couple of lifejackets, swimming to Miami (which we could see from where we were sitting), and taking a cab back to Fort Lauderdale. We figured we could get a hotel room, hang at the beach, and wait on the boys to return after the trip. Ironically, my husband found us there and listened dutifully while we went on a tirade about how sucky the trip was. We bailed on the trip a day early, got a hotel room, and spend the day at Fort Lauderdale beach before coming home.

Now, this didn’t deter us in anyway from the real goals. The real goals were: could we live this way, and were we comfortable sailing? We all agreed we could do it WITHOUT Captain Asshat, and on a new boat with better toilets, shower facilities, and screens on the dang ports! Also, a dinghy was a must so we could actually get to the beach we were anchored off of, and at no time were we to ever go back to Biscayne Bay with it’s nasty pond water. We would sail in beautiful blue water that we could swim and snorkel in. My husband began a list of things he needed to find solutions for to ensure he wouldn’t find his wife and daughter swimming away in life jackets.

To be continued....