May 17 — Into every life some rain must fall….

It’s not about the actual rain (which we have plenty of) but our cruising and docking today.

I took the wheel when Cliff went down below just in time to reach a stretch of the ICW where the marks had been changed so recently that even our electronic charts were out-of-date. My first scare was when the depth suddenly registered a LOT lower than the channel had been showing. I slowed down (good for me…Cliff told me that’s the first step whenever you’re confused!) and spotted a red mark.

That’s when I got all confused. One of the first mnemonics a boater learns is “Red Right Return.” When you are headed north on the ICW it is considered “leaving” not “returning.” Because the green markers on the channel were moved, it looked like I was on the wrong side of the red. Fortunately, a boater behind us radioed with the info about the markers being moved, I made a quick change in direction and we were back in deep water. Sigh. Gasp. Gads. Shortly thereafter I handed over the navigation to Cliff:-)

Today’s journey was terrific (mostly…). We navigated past small, smart homes and some newer developments that had a tinge of Ft. Lauderdale about them. One of the areas we passed is called The Palm Coast. What an apt name. The homes bordering the ICW have forests of palms in their backyards. As we continued north, more and more live oak replaced the palms.

Hurricane Irma’s destruction is still visible even this far north. And there are lots of sad boats.

The other “rain” that we dealt with today was a horrible mooring experience. The marina had us in a slip that had a fierce current to start with. And the winds foretelling a rain storm were at work as well. Screech, crunch, ugh. We were blown and swept starboard right into another boat’s anchor. Fortunately, absolutely no damage to that boat. But some railing and gelcoat work is in store for DotCalm. We eventually moored in a different slip — in the rain, but with no current and gentler winds.

A sailboater who’d followed us into the marina stopped by and made both of us feel better with his comments about how crazy it was to schedule a boat of our size into a slip with no maneuvering room.  We later learned that the marina has a limited number of slips with electricity (due to Irma) and were trying to give us one with 50amps. Later, we watched a large yacht try to come into the gas dock — requiring several shots on a straight landing. So I gave us a little slack in evaluating our docking maneuver.  Cliff stopped by to talk to the “anchor guy” and he was lovely. He heard us hit and thought: “Lightning! Terorists! What’s happening?” It was just us.

We are now cozily moored and using our generator.