Learning To Sail Part 2

Palmetto, Florida

Regatta Pointe Marina

New Horizons

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Twenty Years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore.  Dream.  Discover!  ~~Mark Twain

Continued…..

Learning to Sail

3^rd Time Attempting to Sail

Our neighbor’s Tony and Christina had told us about a place they had sailed out to called Passage Key.  They told us that when they anchored close to Passage Key, the water was so clear they could see their anchor fifty feet under their boat!  They also told us that it would be a great place to snorkel.  So, off we go!  We motored out of our slip and began motoring down the river to where we could hoist our sails.  This time, with me at the helm.  Keith hoisted our sails but there wasn’t any wind to help us sail to Passage Key so we decided to motor sail out to Passage Key.

We had just made it out past Emerson Pointe and into Tampa Bay, first time we’d made it to Tampa Bay.  All of a sudden we began to hear a strange noise coming from the engine’s exhaust!!  A few minutes later we got the engine’s warning light, the engine was over heating!  Keith tried pulling the engine’s choke, which is suppose to shut the engine off and it wouldn’t shut off!  Keith ran below to check on, I have no idea what, then ran back up and kept trying to pull on the choke…and it still wouldn’t shut off!! He was even cursing at the engine saying, “shut off, B***H!!  I got soooo nervous!!  We found out that the engine wouldn’t shut off because we had it at full throttle! LOL..as soon as we put the engine in idle we were able to pull the choke and the engine shut off!!

*SIGH*

Remember I told you that we were motor sailing because there was no wind? Well, it was dead calm out there!  We staled our sailboat in the middle of the channel; it was something like being stuck in the middle lane on the freeway! It was Sunday and it seemed as if everyone was out on their MOTOR boats!  They zoomed by, smiled and waved…and left us tossing and rolling around in their waves!!  I totally felt like a sitting duck! It was humid and hot and Maxi was so anxious, he was making me anxious and nervous! 

Thank God for our broker Frank who gave us a free 2 month membership to sea tow with the purchase of our sailboat!  Keith got on the radio and called sea tow.  We just had to wait for about 45 minutes before they got out to us and began to tow us back to our slip. When we got back to our slip, the guy from sea tow had Keith sign some paperwork and told us that we were lucky to have the membership because if we hadn’t had it, it would of cost us $600.00 to get back!!

Thank youuuuuuuuu Frank!!

Stay with us…we still have more on our learning to sail adventureeee!!

El