Thanksgiving on our boat Seaesta.
I'm sure that your thanksgiving was spent with lots of family members eating too much , watching football games on TV and lots of turkey.
Thanksgiving for us was quite a different experience this year. The four of us woke up in a marsh surrounded by long brown grass in Georgia. It was 54 degrees in the boat and the sun was just coming up. The wind was blowing 10 knots and even the pelicans were huddled to keep warm on the bank. We were feeling homesick as we pulled the anchor and motored down the Intercoastal Water way (ICW) which is just wider marsh. After the diesel engine had run for a while the boat began to warm up. I really wanted to spend Thanksgiving with some other people. For the first time on the trip I was really feeling homesick. While traveling the ICW we often listened to the VHF radio to see what other boats were doing. At about 10:00 hr we heard a call on the vhf from another boat called Rhondo.
We had met the boat two months earlier in Atlantic City NJ and hadn't seen them since. Rhondo was in the Wahoo River (Georgia) that feeds into the ICW. So by 15:00hr and 40 miles later we sailed off the ICW and into the Wahoo river. The area again was a small river surrounded by miles or marsh grass. There were two other boats anchored with Rhondo, Tamure- a couple who had sailed around the world and Quixotic - from Canada with their boy. We invited everyone to a potluck supper on board our vessel. You have to realize that we were all in a very remote location so whipping up turkey with all the fixings was not possible or practical. The food that everyone brought was delicious but the only conventional Thanksgiving food was cornbread. There were eleven people in our salon with plenty of food and cheer. After much feasting Scott and Kitty from Tamure treated us all to a 2 hour slide show of their trip around the world. They sailed twice around the world, once as a couple without children and once with their two boys (about the same age as Evan and Pierce are now). We were all encouraged by their adventure to distant lands and exotic places. When the slide show was over our guests all dingyed back to their boats in the windless night air and the sound of crickets in the marsh grass.
That is the story of how we spent Thanksgiving UP THE WAHOO with seven strangers (now friends) in our boat. We were very thankful for the experience.. |
