Humility

I am sitting and writing this morning in a moment of humility. I don’t know wether the writing is helping the crying or the crying is helping the writing. I do know that Carrabelle is now not my favorite place to anchor through no fault of its own. First let me say that we are not unexperienced sailors, we have been sailing for nine years now. At the same time we are not old salty dogs that have more nautical miles than land miles. I do feel that we are competent. OK I feel that my captain is. In the time that we have been sailing he has never once made me afraid for my safety. We have been in situations that  warranted extra heart palpitations like the 2013 MacMan Race but even then I wasn’t afraid that he had the situation calmly and completely under control. 

Me on the other hand... In the years that we have been sailing I have mildly shown interest in learning to sail the boat by myself. Marc is happy to sail and run the show patiently telling me what to do when. I have been happy to make meals, read, write. Don’t get me wrong I’m not sailing stupid I have just chosen to be passive and be led instead of thinking. This has worked as you can see for the past nine years. I realize now that it must stop. We are not in our accustomed waters going to anchorages that we have been to many times. We are cruising and my captain needs a partner. 

We pulled into Carrabelle yesterday afternoon to an anchorage recommended on Active Captain and by other cruisers. It looked great on the charts and there were some boats already anchored there. As is our normal anchoring practice I take the helm while Marc drops the hook. The current was moving extremely fast and as we moved in the area was shallow and shoaling all around. As I said there were other boats in the anchorage so extra caution there. Without going into a long list of details we got caught sideways in the current with two anchors out. Now I am sure that many arm chair sailors out there (I could probably list the ones I know right now) are criticizing. Well, I want to say that it was my fault. Marc was trying to do everything in a new experience without a partner. Though he gave clear instructions my inexperience prevailed and I was of little help. I was the cause for the situation. If I had had the knowledge and had actively participated before when we got in a new situation I would have been an asset in stead of a liability. Of course as always Marc took responsibility and when he had straightened out our situation he calmly sat down and we discussed the things that went wrong. Embarrassingly I allowed him to take the blame. 

This morning I was lying in bed drinking coffee and reading my favorite blogs while Marc prepared the boat to leave. AgainI was not actively participating. It doesn’t seem like a big thing but if I had bothered to help I would have noticed that it was low tide. I would have notice that the current changed direction. I would have noticed that an anchor rode was very close. Again I am not going to go into detail but the result was that my lack of experience and lack of participation caused us to catch the rode of the other boat. Once again Marc patiently got us out of a bad situation. 

I know now that I can’t passively be part of this journey. I now know that I can’t stay below and pop up when a dolphin swims by. I can’t just bake cookies. I can’t just read blogs about storage, refurbishing & exotic locations. My captain needs a partner.