Killer Day!

Up until last year when we sailed South my most frightening day ever was crossing to the famous Cedros Island midway down the peninsula of Baja California in Mexico. That day was dreadful.
Topped that one today I tell ya... *shivers* Today was so friggin scary I actually did utter the magic words "Oh God, please let us survive this!" Yup. I prayed. I openly and out loud prayed. Maybe more than once too. Not sure. But I did in fact pray to the baby Jesus and begged him to let me see the full moon tonight.

We sailed our spinnaker sail. For the third time today ever, we sailed it. And for the third time I thought I would die behind it. Or get hurt. Or break something. Like a bone, a neck or maybe our boat.

It started perfectly well. It was in fact sublime. We had a wind, dead behind us, and our sails were useless. Lee said "Let's try the spinnaker!"

"Uh oh." I was still shaking from our 2 previous attempts. And up he comes the staircase dragging that pretty thing of death.

We hooked that bitch up, pulled it up and shazam - it was awesome! Beyond awesome. It parachuted open dead center in front of our boat and we hit speed digits we'd never (ever) seen. We even wen't beyond 10 knots. Which is insane, trust me.

Suddenly (after nearly 3 hours of nose bleeding speeds of 8-10 knots) the wind picked up. It PICKED UP! Mega schmega style! And this beautiful butterfly turned on us and went à-la Hitchcock and yanked the boat to one side dipping in the water then boom yanked it to the other side, tipping so far over I stood STOOD on the SIDE of the bench 0_o and this went on and on and ohmygodIwilldieinthisfrigginboat on.

I took a picture of where one of my shoes landed. It wasn't on me per say, but it needed to leap from one counter to the other, to land 4 feet away tucked between the stove and the cabinet. Ok? I can go on. I so could totally go on with the weird and insane stuff that happened. But I won't. Because you either:

1. Would not care.
2. Would not believe me.
3. Would be too scared to sleep tonight.
4. Would ask to see my I.D. (in case you work for for the DMV or the INS or the FDA or the CIA or the KKK)

Why the heck would I ever think of adding those last 3 hateful letters???
We freaked out. Needless to say. We tried loosening both sides. The sail only parachuted more and created a bigger bubble. We lowered the lanyard holding the death bitch up. Bigger bubble. We loosened the sides again. Big bubble. Words were said. Maybe yelled. Prayers were mumbled. Then spoken more clearly. Bits of flesh were lost on the quickly and harshly tugging lines. Rope burns. They suck.

Finally we tossed the coin: it's us and the boat or that beautiful flapping butterfly. We won. Thank god. And we released first one side then the other. I'm at 530 words and by now the true story has taken over 60 minutes, has brought my heart rate way up and ...I don't know... I realized I had more of a belly than I did last year. Yeah, as I jumped from one side to the next I looked down and saw the bulge. What can I say, I love hot pastrami sandwiches!

Yeah. So long story short (too late) we let go both sides, watched it flop all over the place, then finally let it out the top so much it came down to the water, we motored up to it scooped it up and allowed twentyfivethousand gallons of salt water into our cockpit (hee hee I said cock). Oh yeah, and with all this tipping dreadfully from one side to the other a jug of fuel spilled over. Fun! We not only had the threat of laying the boat on its side but now we faced the thought of explosion!

Killer day I tell ya, killer day! Oh and my belly - have I mentioned my belly and how my legs need a waxing?