High and Dry

 They say every day on the loop is an adventure and you never know what to expect. Well, today was one of those days and if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it. Tom woke up at 5 am with a sixth sense that the boat wasn’t moving and thought maybe we were hung up on the dock somehow. What he saw was even stranger.  The wind was strong and that combined with the northerly direction and low tide had sucked much of the water out of the already shallow Carrabelle River that we are on.  Our boat was sitting up out of the water with only the bow still in some water and the whole thing was pitched forward - I could hardly walk up the steps from our cabin! It took a minute to realize that we were on mud instead of in the water, and as I began to look around I noticed that the whole middle of the river in front of us was now an island. There are a handful of boats anchored on the other side of that shallow stretch and they were out of the water also. Two sailboats (without people on board, I think) were keeled over so far I thought they would capsize. 

Our boat was not damaged in any way, which was good and we just had to wait all day to gradually become afloat again. Needless to say, we were prisoners on the boat until about 4:30 pm when Tom could climb out of the back of the boat and I had to crawl out onto the dock on my hands and knees and then stand up.  We lifted Madison so she could potty for the first time in 16 hours! I did take her to the bow of the boat to pee this morning, but she would prefer not to do that. We also took advantage of the freedom of being off the boat to walk over to the IGA and stock up on water, soda and staples just in case we get to leave here tomorrow to cross the gulf.

The wind has now died down here on the river, but it is still in the 30’s, and I’m still wearing a stocking hat and gloves.  So much for chasing 80 - I’d just be happy for a temperature that didn’t start with a 3 or 4!  We still are unsure about whether it will be a good “crossing window” tomorrow or not. So many weather models to look at and try to figure out. We really won’t know until around noon tomorrow if we can go.

So, our very cold day isolated on the boat was spent reading, doing word puzzles and having pot pie soup for dinner.  Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings….











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