An Afternoon on the River

This afternoon Julia and I enjoyed visiting some dear friends who are vacationing here at Oriental for the week. They're renting a house right on the river. Julia played with their daughter. They spent lots of time on the little river beach -- see it through the porch rails? Then they painted a little.

I caught the two sisters in a sweet moment. They live on opposite coasts, so this week is a precious time together.

Meanwhile, Adam decided to sail for the afternoon and took Sandy along! He got her a doggie life vest. I checked in with him on the cell phone, and he was sailing down the river in our direction. At last, I thought I could maybe see him. The picture below was zoomed in a bit. This was after he'd been sailing a couple of hours.

And slowly ... very slowly ... he came closer. At this point, I was standing on the end of the pier, with a white trash bag tied on the end of a long stick, waving said stick in the air. "Here I am, honey!!"

Adam said he'd try to tie up to the pier. His boat draws 2' 7", so he must have that much depth to keep his keel from sticking in the mud. I had a can of beans with a long piece of yarn tied around it, and we dropped it into the water at the end of the pier, to see if it was deep enough. Adam really wanted 3 feet of water, but 3 feet we did not have. Sigh. I told him we were a few inches short, and he could try it if he wanted. Julia wanted to hop on the boat and sail home with him.

He sailed to within about 20 feet of us ... so close! And then the boat ground to a halt as the keel scraped bottom. At that point, Adam had to get it unstuck. He started the motor, put it in reverse, but stayed stuck. Then he adjusted the sails, put the motor in its forward gear, and did a tight turn.

It worked! He got the sailboat out of the river mud, and quickly he headed away. Julia was sad. We called and whistled to Sandy. You should have seen the confused look on her face! I was sad Adam couldn't tie up to the dock, but there you have it:  a sailboat must have adequate water. As Adam said, when you sail on a river and creeks like this, it's not a matter of if you'll get your bottom stuck in mud; it's a matter of when you'll get stuck!