For much of our trip, I was incred­i­ble sea­sick. When I was man­ning the helm, I held the wheel with one hand as I leaned over the edge of the boat vom­it­ing. Drink­ing copi­ous amounts of water kept me hydrat­ed though.

The only food I could keep down were Granny Smith apples and pret­zels. In fact, by the end of the trip, there were pret­zels every­where. My hus­band would lift up a cush­ion, find yet anoth­er pret­zel, and swear under his breath. It was pret­ty fun­ny hear­ing him vow there would be no more pret­zels brought onboard.

Once we made it to Jack­sonville, we were anx­ious to get into the port. We were still sail­ing, so we attempt­ed to sail in. Ini­tial­ly, we planned to wait until morn­ing. We’d passed the port open­ing with the inten­tion of anchor­ing in a spot I had mapped out, not real­iz­ing that anchor­age wasn’t for small sail­boats, but rather giant ships. So, we made a u-turn and gunned it at eight knots.

We couldn’t get a clear shot because we were dodg­ing ships that had no inten­tion of wait­ing for us to take our turn. I equate it to walk­ing across the inter­state in rush hour traf­fic. After a few har­row­ing tries, we gave up.

We’d dropped the sail and I steered back south across the chan­nel open­ing the way we’d come, while my hus­band pushed the boat with the dinghy. The night was so black, I could bare­ly see. From the dinghy, he couldn’t see what was in front of us unless he stood up. He told me to aim for a cruise ship as if it were a bea­con. This was the start of our mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

I could see the ship was for­ward, and we were mov­ing per­pen­dic­u­lar to them. I think his inten­tion was to slip behind it to get out of the very dan­ger­ous inlet and spend the night out­side the jet­ty until morn­ing.

As we closed in on the ship, I mutinied rather than die, which I was con­vinced would hap­pen if I con­tin­ued fol­low­ing his advice. I chose my own path to the oth­er side, but it was impos­si­ble to main­tain a straight line. The wind had picked up and the boom kept shift­ing back and forth. It would swing to one side and I would yank the wheel furi­ous­ly to the oppo­site direc­tion to coun­ter­act the boat turn­ing. Then it would swing back, and I’d rush to turn the wheel all the way to the oth­er side.

My hus­band had con­vinced me it was unnec­es­sary to secure the boom, but after almost dis­lo­cat­ing my shoul­ders try­ing to maneu­ver the boat across, I secured it any­way. I guess I’m a ter­ri­ble first mate. To be fair, we both only had pieces of the puz­zle so we were doing the best with what we had.

Once we final­ly made it around the jet­ty, we found a place to spend the night and dropped anchor, right before a sud­den storm affront­ed us. We’d kept watch care­ful­ly to make sure we didn’t drift, but instead of leav­ing the next morn­ing, we were trapped for two nights below deck in fear for our lives. The wind and dri­ving rain beat our boat furi­ous­ly.

At this point, I would have been relieved to have a Coast Guard res­cue. I have to admit I sent a cou­ple of In case you don’t hear from me again texts to my fam­i­ly, prob­a­bly scary the sh** out of them. Then, a mir­a­cle hap­pened.

We woke up to the most beau­ti­ful, peace­ful morn­ing… and decid­ed to try again. My appre­hen­sion was replaced with a sense of calm. My sea­sick­ness aban­doned ship. Uni­ty now restored, we worked togeth­er and made it into the chan­nel. The pre­vi­ous nights seemed like a very bad dream.

Car­go ships and cruise ships passed us, as well as small motor boats. There was no squeez­ing around one anoth­er, no vol­ley­ing for first place. Just a per­fect day! I think what made it so per­fect, though, was the con­trast. The bad makes the good bet­ter (my #life­pro­tip of the day).