Friends…I wrote this last week and am just now getting to post it. More to come but I wanted to get this out there…

It’s 5:06AM on Thursday (4/24) morning. I am on the night watch. There is a crescent moon (what my brother, Adam, would call a “toenail moon”) that barely lights the water. It only popped up about a half hour ago. It is very dark. So dark that I can see the milky way. Despite a fleece and my windbreaker, I am slightly chilled due to the wind.

I wasn’t going to blog but I want to let Steve sleep for as long as I can and writing will help keep me awake. So here I am.

Right, let me start by saying that everyone is okay and safe and sleeping (or at least laying down) at the moment. Mom/Dad, Mum/Dad, this will likely be a tough one to read. Feel free to skip it (seriously). Again…we are okay. And wiser. All good.

We had two……….(searching for the right words)…..serious moments today. I mean, we had some really cool things happen, too. At sunset, we watched the dolphins chase us. One actually jumped out of the water and you could see her full body. It was pretty amazing.

But I think the……serious moments…..….will stand out to me for a long time. I think I’m still coming down from the last one so I’ll tell you about the first one first.

*Deep cleansing breath of that salty ocean night air* Buckle up, friends.

It was sunset. We were eating the ready-made chicken pot pie I had popped into our shiny new oven an hour before and eagerly anticipating the hot pull-apart chocolate chip cookies that sat atop of our gimballed stove (that was tilted to the max). Both sails were up and we were cruising, very much heeling (leaning) to our starboard side. But we weren’t bothered by the heeling. In that moment, it was as if we had been doing this for years, just an ordinary day in the life of our sailing family. Everyone was in the cockpit relaxing and enjoying the easy meal with the wind whipping by us. Steve was sitting at the back of the boat keeping an eye on things, even though there was nothing in sight. We could clearly see the edges of the sun as it dipped below the horizon, ever vigilant for that elusive green flash.

“Nope. No green flash tonight. Bummer. Maybe next time. Maybe tomorrow we’ll—"

Steve’s face changed in an instant and he instinctively jerked the wheel hard to starboard with his immediately available left hand, his right hand still holding his bowl of chicken pot pie. Just as he did that—out of thin air—a boat!

A boat—roughly the size of ours, that was so close that I could describe the captain’s white polo shirt and burgundy quick-dry shorts in detail and tell you that he was walking upstairs from his saloon—barely passed us on our port side. I could actually hear the absolute shock and surprise and fear in the captain’s voice. I could HEAR his normal-volume voice! I couldn’t tell you what he said, though. My brain couldn’t process words that fast. I just had the visual. No one screamed—there wasn’t time. It felt like he was five feet away from us.

What? Just? Happened? Where on earth did that boat come from? How (!!!) did that happen???? Did I just imagine that??? Oh my gosh, that could have been really, really bad. REALLY bad.

It all happened so fast. From out of nowhere (!!!!!). I had to keep staring at the sailboat as it drove away from us just to convince myself that it was real. That this had really happened.

“I cannot believe that.”

I just kept saying it. Slowly. Over and over. I was in shock. We were all in shock. No doubt the other captain was in shock, too.

Our boat is 46 feet long. Steve reckoned that the other sailboat was about 20 feet away from us.

20 feet away. In the entire (!) ocean. Too close. Way too close. Something that big got 20 feet away from us and we didn’t see it or hear it?!??!??! How is that even possible?

Well, friends, today I (well, all of us) learned a very important lesson: sailboats have a blind spot. A MAJOR blind spot. When both sails are up, it makes it incredibly difficult to see the horizon on the leeward side where the sails are blocking. If another sailboat—with his sails up—is coming in the opposite direction on the same course then the two boats will not physically see each other. But, of course, the boats will “see” each other because each will be visible on the radar.

Unless the boats are not registered. Like that boat wasn’t. He (I say “he” because I saw HIM: a tan, athletic white-haired man in his early 70s with his dinner plate in hand) did NOT have AIS (Automatic Identification System). He was not registered. So we didn’t see him. He was literally not on our radar. And we almost collided.

Phew. Yeah. That was scary. Really scary. Which leads me to my next moment that happened about eight hours later. Oh, what a day….

We were outside of Daytona Beach, FL. We didn’t want to get to Ft. Pierce too early (don’t want to try to enter the inlet and anchor in the dark) AND there is a launch scheduled tomorrow (tonight) from Cape Canaveral. We are going to try to hang out just outside of the “exclusion zone” to watch it. As a result, we needed to do some tacking (turning). We needed to tack around 2:45AM in the dark.

Not ideal, but very doable. Steve got the lines and winches ready and I was at the helm. The first time we tried to turn, I didn’t turn the wheel fast enough (yes, there is a pattern here…turn the wheel faster, Holly) and we had to do it again. The second time, I made the turn quickly. The headsail started to make its way slowly over to the starboard side but then abruptly stopped and was frantically flapping in the wind—it got caught on something. But it was super dark and we couldn’t see what was catching it. Then Steve saw it: the fender. It was caught on a fender.

Earlier in the day, Steve and I chatted about the fenders. He said that he normally keeps them tied back by the dinghy but that since we had such a short passage, we would leave them where they were, just pulled up from the side of the boat.

That was a mistake. As the headsail was flapping in the wind, Steve needed to go on deck—out of the cockpit—to release that line from the fender. It was dark. He went downstairs to turn on the deck lights. I then watched him clip into the yellow jackline strap that runs along the sides of the boat for such occasions. Then, he verrrrry slowly and verrrry carefully scooted on his butt along the port side to the forward part of the boat where the line was caught.

Now, Steve is a very careful and a very methodical man when it comes to safety. Safety is a passion of his and it was his actual job for a long time. If anyone knows how to do this sort of thing safely, it’s Steve.

And.

He is a human being. My husband, not only the love of my life but also the only one who really knows how to do everything on this floating vessel of ours, was moving alongside our boat in the dark. He was about to release a very tight line.

Oh Jesus, please keep him safe…

My mind was racing.

To self: Okay, Holl, for reals…what do you actually do if he goes overboard? I pulled my super bright flashlight out of my pocket just in case. Seriously…what are the steps you would take to rescue him? (Thinking hard) I would….(racking my brain for the man overboard lesson I had in 2021)…I would….I would….well, it depends on the situation….if the jackline holds him, he’ll be dragging next to the boat. What if the jackline doesn’t hold? What if he hits his head and is unconscious in the water? Conscious or unconscious, if the jackline doesn’t hold, I would throw out the lifebuoy and a bunch of cushions to track his trail and yell “MAN OVERBOARD” to wake the kids. And then I would just drive to him, even though the sails would be up and flapping….or should I take the sails down first to give me more control on steering? I don’t want to run him over. Okay….how do I take the sails down? I let out the mainsail furling line on the starboard side—the black and white one--and I simultaneously pull in the outhaul on the port side…. And how do I pull him in…? I can’t just lift him. He’s heavy and he'll be wet….

Please be okay, Steve. Jesus, please keep him safe…

*****

For the record, he was absolutely fine. He released the line brilliantly and came back without any issues whatsoever. But he was tired. Very tired.

The next morning, we talked and I asked him if he was scared (because, you know, I was quite terrified). He said he wasn’t scared at all (what?) and explained that he deliberately went out on the port side because it was the higher side and so if he fell, his center of gravity would pull him towards the center of the boat (as opposed to going out on the lower side where his center of gravity would have pulled him overboard). He had done it many times in his previous sailing experiences and had often done it in pouring down rain.

Oh. Glad I was the only one who was terrified then.

After he walked me through his thoughts, we then walked through what I would actually do should he go overboard. I now know that there is a red line hooked to the top of the mast that attaches to an empty carabiner clip in the center of the boat. Once I pull the boat alongside of him, “all” I would need to do is clip the carabiner to the metal loops on his (or whomever’s) lifejacket and loop the red rope around the winch and pull him in, just like I was pulling in a sail.

Easy peasy.

Ha. No thank you. Hopefully we’ll practice with a buoy once we get settled.

*dismissive laugh* “Once we get settled.” Ha…someday...maybe.

In the meantime, I’ll just make sure we bring in the fenders whenever we sail.

4/24/25 - Blind Spots & Fenders

5/5/25 - Self-Care

4/20/25 - Dancing with Layla