Major Change In Plans

Pine Island Sound, N26 28 W82 07
January 20, 2006

This morning we took Norman for a sail before leaving Shell Point. Unfortunately, Martha isn’t mobile enough to be able to jump onboard so she couldn’t come. It was a lovely morning so we had a lot of fun and I think Norman had fun too. He got to see his home grounds from the water side for the first time so that was of great interest. After dropping off Norman we started to leave Shell Point and promptly ran aground in the canal. We were crowded to the right side of the canal by a fishing boat who was fishing right in the middle, and another oncoming boat. That was a mistake because there was a shoal. Oh well, so many groundings we can’t count. This time the fishermen who helped crowd us out helped by taking out our anchor to kedge. We were grateful for that.

We had a great time with Norman and Martha. They are wonderful hosts and they went to a lot of trouble to show us a good time. Thank you very much Norman and Martha.

Our plan after leaving was to head right out to sea for a three day passage across the Gulf of Mexico to Pass Christian Mississippi. Before leaving though we made one more attempt to contact the people in Pass Christian to see if there is indeed a place there where we can get Tarwathie in and anchored. This time we succeeded and we found the answer, “regrettably no.” We discussed several alternatives, and none will work. We just can’t go there by boat.

So now what do we do? We’ve been planning on doing the hurricane volunteer work in Pass Christian for six months. Now the legs are knocked out from underneath us. A secondary but critical part of our plan is to get to Fort Benning Georgia in early February for David’s graduation from US Army basic training. We just got a letter from David yesterday and he told us that he’ll be going to Iraq. Oh dear. That makes it all the more important for his mother to be there to see him at his graduation.

We’re just starting to think of other plans. We could put the boat in dry storage and take a bus to Pass Christian, then rent a car to go to Fort Benning. We might be able to find a place in Biloxi Mississippi or Pensacola Florida. We could go back to Marathon in the Florida Keys. That’s the nicest place we’ve seen this year. We could go to Houston and find a place for the boat in Kemah Texas near Galveston. We could leave early to go to Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama. We could sail for the Virgin Islands or Trinidad or Venezuela. We could even go to Cuba if we want to risk confiscation by the US Coast Guard. It’s only 150 miles from here.

I guess the only thing certain at this point is that we’ll spend this weekend thinking and planning. Pine Island Sound is a delightful place to do it. Nature abounds and we’re anchored right now just 100 meters from the Ding Darling nature refuge on Sanibel Island. Our cruising guides say that this area is one of the nicest in Florida.