Sailing Destination Never Reached

As I was reading one of my blogging friends funny stories about boating, it reminded me of a funny sailing adventure I have to share.

Many years ago my husband and I fixed a friend up with a blind date. It's sort of funny how the blind date scenario was also somewhat prophetic of what turned out to be like a bad blind date with a sail boat! In a moment you'll see what I mean.

Our friend had a 28 foot sailboat and invited us to go out with him and so we fixed him up with a blind date with an acquaintance of mine. Prior to that time neither my husband or I had ever seen our friends sailboat. Not knowing what it looked like, or what type of sailboat he had, I simply figured that since it was a 28 footer it would of course have some modern conveniences. But, this was where the boat itself became like a bad blind date. It was far from our visions of grandeur!

We arrived at the marina in Gig Harbor where our friends sailboat was moored, only to discover the sailboat was not at all what we had envisioned. The sailboat turned out to be an old wooden racing sailboat wanna-be. In other words it was nothing more than a flat decked sailboat with no modern conveniences, and only a very small amount of storage beneath the bow! It was more like launching a raft, than a sailboat - lol. By now you get the drift (pun intended) when I said it was more like a bad blind date. Drift seemed to be the thing we could not do in the right direction!

Unfortunately we left too late and the sails were not large enough to work against the strong currents we encountered in Puget Sound. Our destination was to be Point Defiance State Park in Tacoma, Washington, but we never made it!

Armed with a cold bottle of champagne and too much beer, we also became in desperate need of the modern convenience that the sailboat was not blessed with! For the guys that was not such a problem, but for us gals -- well let me just say the space below the bow of the boat and Styrofoam cups were the combination to bring about relief for us ladies. Not my idea of a modern convenience!

Although we continued to pursue our destination, after many hours of trying to make it through the strong currents and wind, we gave up and decided to turn back. Of course once we turned back and we were then going with the current, we made it back to the marina in a jiffy. I still laugh about that sailing adventure today, and that we never made it to our destination, which really was not that far away!