The Traveling Book

Funny, that title makes me think of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.  Not a terrible chick flick.  At least that blonde gal—who I believe is now the dashing Blake Lively—was not at all terrible to look at in the movie.

You’re welcome.

No, here, we’re dealing not with pants but with a book.  A kind of special book.  One that has very specific travel powers and that has opened itself only to those salty mariners who dare to find literary magic in the most hit-or-miss of places: the Pandora’s Box that is the free marina book swap.  Many of you have seen them, perused them and—more often than not—taken them up on their very kind offer of “take a book, leave a book.”  The free marina book swap is a fantastic concept, particularly for cruisers who love to read and are generally aiming to travel on the cheap.  Everywhere you stop, there it is: a free, no-membership-required little library with a wide variety of books and no return dates.  I have previously written about my love for book swaps as well as the apparent voodoo that goes along with them, the ever-illusive “book swap mojo” and the deference it demands.

Annie here, returning (with much reluctance) a very powerful read, The Paris Wife, to the book swap in Key West during our trip down to the Keys in 2014 to pay homage and ensure my continued good book swap mojo.

I am also intrigued by the typical books you always see in the marina book swaps.  I like to imagine the types of cruisers who leave and read these genres.  I’ll bet the Clive Cusslers are the sort of Captain Ron type cruisers that bump their way into any anchorage and usually ask forgiveness rather than permission when it comes to docking their dinghy, borrowing power, water and the like.  Then, there’s the Danielle Steels and the Nora Roberts, the “Fabio books” (I like to call them), like our Western Man here.  Shazam!

I’ll bet the readers of these rather unabashed love stories are just that: romantics.  They likely see their husband/captain in a bit of a lofty, heroic manner and while many aspects of cruising may frighten them a little, they find the chivalry of their mate taking the wheel against dangerously beautiful blue water so moving, they find the courage to go.  So, kudos to you Romance Ladies.  Cruise and read on!  Now, who’s reading the John Grishams, Deen Koontz, Tom Clancy’s and the like?  Probably problem solvers.  Those types of boat-project gurus that love to talk for hours about whether you should Loctite that transmission shaft key back in place or drill a hole in it and use seizing wire.  (For those of you thriller/suspense fans who are familiar with our “tranny key” problem, feel free to weigh in in a comment below.  ; )

But, what type of cruiser leaves or takes a book like this?

Me, of course!  Being it’s duly-appointed author and just so darn proud of that little salty gem.  But also being the type of person—to a freaking “T”—the very book itself describes: “A durable but not-so-dainty sailor.”  I like to envision the other boaters and mariners out there who have read, enjoyed and especially shared Salt of a Sailor with others feel they are somewhat the same, or had somewhat the same experience when they were just getting into sailing.  Graduating from the ignorant-but-eager “What rope should I pull?” to the more seasoned “They’re not called ropes.  They’re lines.  Or sheets or halyards or topping lifts.  Anything but ropes.”

These are my people.  Having enjoyed the experience so much myself—of becoming, first, a sailor, then a cruiser, then a bonafide “I finally get it, boats … always something” boat owner—I love sharing my experience through each phase of the transformation.  My revelations, my fears and, particularly, my lessons learned.  But, what I did not quite know, until I stumbled back across the Traveling Book, was how much others were enjoying my stories as well.  Now, it’s time to share the story of the Traveling Book with you.

Travel back with me to last week.  Phillip and I cruising up Florida’s Forgotten Coast, really soaking in all the little sleepy marina towns along the Big Bend, for the first time in years feeling once again live true live-aboard cruisers.  Ahhh …

     

On our way north from Key West, we stopped again in one of our favorites Florida ports—because of its few fantastic restaurants, quiet coastal walking trails, great kitesurfing cove and rightfully-titled “friendliest marina in Florida”—Port St. Joe.  We love that place.  And, it was really fun to learn, turns out, they quite like us too.

We had just docked at Port St. Joe Marina after having spent the day motoring up “the ditch” from Apalachicola along Apalachicola River and Lake Wimico.

And, I should say up-and-coming Captain Annie docked us right and proper in Port St. Joe, because I did.  I nailed it!  And we had just finished washing the boat down—the chore we always tackle the minute we get docked up after a passage—when Lisa, who runs the marina office, walked out to our boat, knocked on the hull and asked: “Is this the famous author?”

I stammered a little, blushed, a little slow on the uptake.  “I don’t know about famous … ” I started in making my way up the companionway stairs but was wondering: “How did she know?”  Or at least how did she remember so quickly put two and two together having not yet seen my face.

“Plaintiff’s Rest,” Lisa blurted out, and Phillip and I shared a kind of “Yeah, so … “ look not knowing where Lisa was going with all of this.  “The name of your boat.  I’ll never forget it as I’ve never met another Plaintiff’s Rest, so I knew, when you hailed us out in the bay, it had to be you.  You’re Annie, right?”

I nodded and then recalled that fateful day years ago when Lisa and I first met.  You see, when Phillip and I were in Port St. Joe last on our boat (it was during our way down to the Keys in 2014), Lisa had found me pouring over all the treasures in the marina book swap and we struck up a conversation.

I’m such a sucker for books!

I told her I was a very amateur writer and wannabe author working, at the time, on my first non-fiction sailing book that did not yet have a name.  An avid reader herself, particularly of pieces written by cruisers as she meets so many running the busy marina there at Port St. Joe, Lisa immediately said she wanted a signed copy of my book once it was published.  It was the first time anyone asked me for that.  I was so flattered and motivated by our conversation that I feverishly wrote several chapters after Phillip and I left Port St. Joe on our way down to Key West.  I completed the first rough draft of Salt of a Sailor during that voyage, self-published in February, 2015 and—remembering Lisa’s request for a signed copy and her very-encouraging excitement about reading my book—sent a first edition signed copy to Lisa at the Port St. Joe Marina office.

I also decided to make that my first “traveling book,” writing a little note in the inside cover explaining why I, as the author, had donated the book to the free marina book swap in hopes that it would travel from marina to marina, being shared among cruisers, each of them writing inside their name, home port, date they finished the book, and what they thought of it for the next reader, and that I might somehow stumble across it again one day and get to see all of the “durable but not-so-dainty” mariners it had touched.  What a cool prospect!  I didn’t know if it would work, if cruisers would really follow my lighthearted instructions and keep the Traveling Book alive, or, much less, if the book even made it to Lisa in Port St. Joe.  But, I soon learned, it had accomplished much more.

“We all loved your book!” Lisa said.

I smiled.

No, take that back.  I beamed.  Lisa told me she was so excited when she got my book in the mail (now over two years ago) that she saved it for herself first, read it, loved it and then shared it with many of her permanent tenants at the marina, who then shared it with others.  Apparently my little book went all around the marina in Port St. Joe for a year or more, with all the cruisers talking about it and sharing their favorite parts, before it traveled off.  Where to?  Lisa did not know, but it didn’t matter as the whole point was that the book traveled—from book swap to book swap—not to which marinas it traveled to.  That little worn copy may be somewhere in the South Pacific right now for all I know.  I like to imagine it is.  Sitting salty, sun-dyed and dog-eared next to a leathery old cruiser and his scruffy dog, waiting to be read (perhaps finished!) during sunset.

And what an awesome moment to share with Lisa again.  “Well, you played a big part in it,” I told her, because she had, that fateful day when we chatted by the Port St. Joe Marina book swap.  So many of my followers motivate and encourage me to continue to share our ups and downs as Phillip and I are, ourselves, still working toward becoming full-time cruisers.  My writing is where it all started.

My goal when I left the practice was to build up some sort of online company where I could earn remote income through my writing.  While I have failed many times in that effort and had to learn from my mistakes and misplaced efforts and strike out in new directions, I also learned so much each time about marketing and how I can best use my writing skills (and new skills I have learned along the way) to help my clients reach and engage more people and grow their businesses, as I grow mine in turn.  Although my career as a renowned author—where Phillip and I were supposed to simply sip Mai Tais and watch my royalty checks roll in—never took off quite how I imagined, I don’t mind at all.   I simply love to write and when book or story ideas come to me, I love to run with them.  It’s the ultimate creative high!  And the ultimate reward.

Lisa, too, was about to get a very-surprising reward for her contribution as well.

“That book was so much fun,” she said, talking about Salt of a Sailor.  “I wish you had written another.”  I smiled again as Phillip and I shared a glance full of fun secrets.  I told Lisa I had written a sequel to Salt, that actually covered parts of the trip Phillip and I were taking at the time I met her, on our way down to the Keys in 2014 and that I would bring her another signed copy to the marina office later that day.  And, much to my surprise, Lisa asked:

“Does it have all of those old stories about your grandma and growing up in Alabama?”

You’re darn right it does!  And just like that.  BOOM.  Traveling Book #2 was born.

Go little book, go!

If any of you haven’t read Keys to the Kingdom yet—the story of my escape from corporate-consumeristic America—go to the Books tab at HWWT.com to download a free preview and check it out.  Next time we stop in Port St. Joe, Lisa will be thrilled to hear as well about my third book and I’ll leave her a signed copy of None Such Like It to round out the trilogy.  Books are such fun!

Also, as a fun aside.  While my docking at Port St. Joe went well, unfortunately the DE-docking did not when this amateur helmswoman took the wheel, didn’t handle the prop wash too well, backed up like my buddy Chuck would say, “a drunk elephant,” got us all whopper-jolled in between the two dock aisles (I call them) and had a slight boat bump on the way out.  Well, technically it was a very minor anchor-to-outboard *kiss* at the last minute, so Phillip says it’s technically not a boat-to-boat collision.

But, docking.  Still scary.  Still not great at it.  But still working on it.  My nerves were better this time, though.  Throughout the very tedious 10-point turn Phillip walked me through, I didn’t lose the ability to function, and I only left the helm for a second (just a split-second!) to fend off another boat’s bow.  Apparently as helmsperson that’s the one thing you’re not supposed to do.  Whoops.  Still learning.

April 6, 2014 – Keys Log: Day 4 – Clean Plate Club

I heard a light little shuffle up on the deck, a gentle swish of a bag and then the warm scent of fresh-baked muffins filled the cabin …  Okay, they weren’t fresh-baked, they were wrapped, but the gesture felt the same.  We woke on Sunday morning to find the Sunday paper and the two darling little banana nut muffins laid lovingly on the deck of our boat by the friendly staff at Port St. Joe Marina.

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When they say they are the “friendliest marina in all of Florida,” I have to say … I believe them!  We sat and read the paper, and drank coffee and nibbled on muffins all morning.  After two nights in a row of two-hour shifts at the helm, a nice, leisurely morning on the boat was just what we needed.

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Yes, we took pictures of it.  We’re just that devoted to the blog … 

Around noon, or even a little after, we finally ventured out to see what the ole’ town of Port St. Joe had to offer.  We were thrilled to find beautiful, breezy walking paths around the marina,

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a potentially perfect cove for kite-boarding,

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a quaint little downtown strip with several quirky bars, unique restaurants and other delightfully tacky establishments.  Definitely our kind of place!

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Now, I don’t know about you fellow cruisers, but when Phillip and I eat out on our sailing ventures, we like to try and scout out the little local places that offer food we can’t really replicate on the boat.  Something unique to that area, or unique altogether that we haven’t had in a while – like some great middle eastern food, or a decadent french meal, or some funky little taco hut that has a line around the corner.  Not knowing at all what we were in the mood for, we stumbled upon this colorful little Mexican place – Peppers – and decided it was definitely worth a go.

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And boy, was it!  A hot basket of chips and salsa hit the table as soon as we did, and didn’t stop coming the whole time we were there.  A hot, piping basket even came out with the check that Phillip and I tried to wave off, but that we actually ended up putting a pretty serious dent in anyway.  We split the “California Burrito,” which was about the size of my right calf (yes, the right one – it’s a little bigger than the left).

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It was bursting with flavorful beans, rice, corn, chicken, cheese.  You name it.  A perfect combination of savory flavors and crisp greens, and it was doused in this addictive queso.  It was awesome!

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Clean Plate Club!  We are card-carrying members.

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We made a few more stops on the way home to provision up (milk, cereal, coffee and the like) and scoped out a few more eateries for the next day’s outing.  We saw a pizza place that some folks at the marina had been telling us about – Joe Mama’s Pizza – but found it was closed Sunday and Monday, and we were planning to leave on Tuesday.  Bullocks!  But, in all, we congratulated ourselves on such a fortuitous stop.  We had never been to Port St. Joe by boat and we were thrilled we’d landed here.  Everything was within walking distance of the boat – bars, restaurants, the Piggly Wiggly.  Whatever you needed.  And, while a storm brewing in the Gulf is bad news for sailing, it certainly was promising for some awesome kiting in the St. Joseph Bay.  We kept an eye on the wind, hoping the storm would bring us some great conditions for kiting while we were there.

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On our way back to the boat, we met some great fellow cruisers that were docked up right next to us – David and Mary Lucas on Liza.  David and Mary were headed down the west coast of Florida to make the cut through the Okeechobee.  We invited them over for sundowners, shared some tall boat tales (although our harrowing dinghy debacle seemed to take the cake – as it often does), cooked up a great grilled chicken salad for dinner and called it a night.

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April 5, 2014 – Keys Log: Day 3 – Don’t Mind the Weather

It’s funny how things tend to work themselves out when you’re sailing.  We had a follower tell us a while back (and rightfully so) that the most dangerous thing you can have on a boat is a schedule.  While time is decidedly always an issue – if only we all had an infinite supply we could go anywhere we want and stay six months – but the weather and wind and the sun also play a role in where you end up by boat.  It’s often a place you didn’t expect to go; rather, it’s a place you chose when you thought the weather wasn’t “working with you,” but once you get there, you often decide it is most definitely a place at which you’re glad to have ended up.  And, then you start to wonder whether the weather had it in mind all along …

So, the wind, in our minds, had not been “working with us” since we started off on this venture.  It was directly out of the southeast, dead on our nose, for the entire first night and day of the trip.  For that reason, we didn’t make near as much ground as we would have liked toward Clearwater, and with a known storm coming into the Gulf in the next day or two, we decided to pull out and head into Port St. Joe.

Log book:

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We had never been there before by boat, but we had heard great things.  It wasn’t originally in the plans for us, but, that’s the thing about plans.  But, as soon as we changed our heading toward St. Joseph Bay, we found ourselves on a perfect beam reach, making great headway, and doing some of our best sailing of the trip yet – right into the black abyss.

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The wind has a wicked sense of humor.  But it was like she was congratulating us on such a wise decision.  We were sailing along so fast, we were going to reach Port St. Joe before sunrise, and – as many of you fellow cruisers I’m sure follow the same rule – on the ole’ Rest our goal is never to come into a new Pass at night, so we actually had to turn around and sail back out into the Gulf for a bit to make sure we didn’t beat the sun in.

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It was a strange feeling to have worked so hard to make way forward for a day and a half, only to now turn around 180 degrees and sail for a few hours at 5.5 knots in the opposite direction.  Like I said … funny how things work out.

But after an hour or two of sailing back out, we finally turned around again, and sailed back in to St. Joseph Bay right around sunrise.  The fog was still so heavy we struggled to find even the flashing bouys.  Markers you would typically see miles out would now only reveal themselves at about 100 yards.

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I sat up at the bow and squinted through the mist to try and find them.

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“There’s one!”

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As the sun finally started to creep up and melt away some of the fog, we caught our first glimpse of land on the horizon and it turned out to be a beautiful morning.

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Thankfully the inlet into St. Joseph Bay was an easy one and we made it into the marina and docked up without issue.

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Between you, me and the fencepost (well, and all followers of this blog, I guess) I still get a little nervous every time we pull up to a dock because you just never know what’s going to happen.  I have failed to lasso a stern pole, jumped off the boat without a line, and a-many other docking mishaps I have failed to mention on this blog that still cause me a little heartburn when we start pulling our big beauty out of the open blue and up next to treacherous pilings and other fiberglass beasts.  A little tip – I always call ahead to the marina (despite the occasional eyeroll from the Captain) and ask them every time to send out a dock-hand (I’m assuming that’s a sufficient title) to help catch a line.  I mean, it’s a big, expensive boat, our most prized possession, I’m not ashamed to ask for eight hands on deck to help save her.  The marina at Port St. Joe has a reputation for being the “friendliest marina in all of Florida,” and I’ll say I have to believe it.  They sent a young chap right out who proved to be an excellent line-catcher and he helped us get tied up and gave us a quick tour of the facilities.  I can’t say enough good things about the folks at the Port St. Joe Marina.  They all went above and beyond.

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Plug that baby in!!

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The Captain … always doing a double-check.  (Rum drink in hand … )

Once the boat was secure, we set out to check out the marina office and get checked in.

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Even the pets at Port St. Joe are friendly.  We had a lovable white lab welcome us right in with a soft pant and a smile.  (To my good friend Anna – he reminded me of Tugg!!)

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The dockside bar there at the marina, looked the perfect place to try out the local Port St. Joe cuisine, so we settled in for some fine oysters and fish tacos.

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Yum!

The folks at the marina office gave us a great welcome packet with maps and flyers and coupons and told us we would have a paper delivered to the boat every morning, with free muffins on Sunday.  I mean, who doesn’t like muffins?  (Especially free ones!).  The book swap was excellent, too.  I had blazed through The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and I was looking for some new material.  I scarfed up another Jack Reacher saga and a James Patterson,

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and Phillip found a Hemingway novel he’d been meaning to read for a while – The Paris Wife.

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We were definitely pleased to be in this Port.  Great food, excellent facilities and our boat was nice and secure.  We were plenty happy to spend a day or three here to wait out the weather.

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While we hadn’t planned it, it all seemed to work out.  Like I said, perhaps the weather had it in mind for us all along.

November 9, 2013 – “When Are You Going to the Islands?”

Isn’t that what you’re all thinking?  At least that’s what I get asked three times a week.  (Yes, I’m talking to you Bleeke!)  Soon, people.  Soon.  Stick with me.  But, I’ll tell you, even when we do get there, it’s not going to be any more beautiful than this:

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And, when we cook up a meal in the galley off the coast of some remote island in the Keys or Bahamas, it’s still going to look like this:

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Adventure is relative and can be found anywhere.  Usually, it’s the act of getting there that’s the real “journey,” not the destination itself.

But, you want to see us on a passage.  I get it.  So do we, minus the transmission fluid catch this time.  Although I’m sure you want to see some equally entertaining minor disaster occur that we have to resolve in true MacGyver fashion with bubble gum, nail polish and sheep shears (all of which we keep on the boat for just such an occasion).

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I’ll see what I can come up with.

Trust me, we were ready to get back out there, too.  With the summer pretty much behind us and all of our major boat chores done, the rubber gloves finally came off,

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and we set down to plan our trip.  Which we, of course, had to do over wine and dinner – a whole roasted snapper, anyone?

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Between work, family and my obligatory appearances on the rodeo clown circuit, we had about two weeks to work with in November.  Yes, we do plan to go longer and further later, but that will have to come later.  All evidence to the contrary, we do have to work.  I can’t stress to you enough how expensive boats can be.  Now, let me remind you how far the actual Keys are:

To the Keys

I think even MacGyver’s scruffy eyebrows raised with that one.  It’s about a four-day passage offshore, if made straight.  That’s 96 hours of solid sailing, which means someone always at the wheel, even with auto-pilot, you still need to keep a lookout and stay close to the helm, particularly at night.  This means, for four days, you only get to sleep in one-to-two hour snatches.  It’s fun, don’t get me wrong.  There’s a certain sense of freedom, adventure and accomplishment when you finish a passage, but it is also a very tiring stint at sea, even in the best of conditions, exhausting and harrowing in the worst.  If we made the four-day passage straight to the Keys, we would need a day or two to rest and recover and that would leave us about one day to enjoy the Keys before we had to start meandering back, two or three, perhaps, if wanted to make another four-day epic passage back across the Gulf.  But that would put us on a tight schedule, and we learned the hard way during The Crossing that you can never be on a tight schedule when sailing.  You have to build in a cushion for the weather.  It’s just part of it.  We hated to push the Keys trip back, but it had to be done.  Trying to squeeze it into the tight travel window we had this winter was not going to allow us the time we wanted to truly enjoy the Keys.  Plus, there were plenty of places we wanted to cruise locally and enjoy.  We decided we would make the trip to the Keys in the spring (after skiing season – of course – that’s a must!) and stick around these parts in November.

Phillip and I decided to head East to Carrabelle.

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That’s about a two-day passage straight.  Forty-eight hours, assuming a good weather window.  If you recall, our boat spent some time over in Carrabelle when the transmission went out, and we really enjoyed poking around the sleepy little mariner towns around there, which feel like they’ve been preserved in time, when sea-faring sailors roamed the streets, rum bottle in hand.  We wanted to head back and spend a couple of days immersing ourselves with the old salts and eating some of the best fresh oysters I have ever let slither down my throat.

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We then wanted to take our time heading back inshore, protected along the Intracoastal Waterway (as much as we could … we would have to pop out into the Gulf for several stretches where our mast height (50 feet) won’t allow us under the bridges).  We pulled out the charts–and the snapper–and started plotting our passage.

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And, what meal is complete without fresh homemade bread and salad?  … None we know of.

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The plan was to hope for good weather, so we could head straight for Carrabelle, spend a night or two there boozing with the locals, then mozey our way back to Apalachicola for some local fare, another night or two to booze again and get our fill of fresh oysters.  Then, we thought we would check out Port St. Joe, a great littler marina there, Cape San Blas (lots of cool anchorages there, too), head back to Panama City in hopes of catching another sighting of our Lady Legs-a-Lot (you remember those heels!), then make the twenty-four passage offshore back to Pensacola.

November trip

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Even with a few extra days’ cushion for potential bad weather, this trip, even taken leisurely, would still easily fill two weeks.  We planned to leave November 15th and return on the 29th.  This was going to be a significant passage for the two of us – heading offshore for a four-day passage.  While I may have proven some creative gumption and gusto in surviving the dinghy debacle and transmission fiasco during The Crossing, this was going to be my first true offshore voyage as First Mate.  I started glossing over our old sailing books again, working expletives back into my everyday conversation, upping my rum tolerance and practicing my knot-tying skills on empty wine bottles.  Oh, and watching weekend-long MacGyver marathons.  That helps too.

A two-week passage in the blistering winter?  Done.  I was packing all my gear.

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Aside from the mullet, MacGyver ain’t got nothing on me!