Robin's Reports

PARKING between YACHTS
by Robin

We left off last with us in the heart of the channel. We passed all the tourny boats waiting to go home. We passed this under-construction dry storage building. Oh...... and Jack is trying to park Mike's 32' Luhrs between two multi-million dollar yachts.

I went to the front of the boat to throw the docklines to whomever would receive them. I was so totally freaked out about Jack's having to park this boat, I didn't catch a picture of the tight spot he had to hit. Parallel parking in high school was a piece of cake compared to this.

I did however, manage to take a picture of the 4 kids who had climbed back in the tower to get a great view of Jack's parking the boat. If you look closely in the window, Jack is turning the wheel and concentrating on the task at hand.

So, Jack is headed totally straight into the center of the open dock area at what seems to be way too much speed for my comfort level. If I hadn't had squid & ballyhoo smell all over my hands, I would have chewed my nails down.

I'm restraining myself as we're less than 10-15' from the dock's edge and Jack hits the reverse throttle. Then somehow, he manages to have a mixture of momentum and slight engine pressure to make it turn 90 deg to the left, pivoting on the nose. Just another slight bump in forward motion and we've slid exactly between these boats! I was speechless. Honestly, I had no idea that my husband had such a way with large boats. It was almost.......no...... it was on the edge of dangerous & sexy mixed into one. I was proud, for sure; but honestly, it was down-right James Bond sexy. It was smooth. It was stylish. It was....... amazing. If strutting was allowed on docks, I'm sure he would have done it. He was beaming when he looked at me.

Above is the boat that was to our backside. It had gorgeous teak/gold (brass?) chairs on the middle deck. Below is the 50+ foot yacht to our left (there were some odd angles on the dock. It's hard to understand from the pic below- so just trust me). Also, the 3rd center console boat was gone by the time I took these last 2 photos. So imagine just one more boat between us and the yacht below.

The 15 minutes that we were there, we saw both the owners of these boats get out and talk with each other. I was pretty sure that they both had eaten caviar on crackers, sipping champagne, for dinner appetizers.

Ok....... so from here on out, we have to hustle because fueling finished at 5:15 and marina gates closed at 5:30! We had 15 min to get the boat forklifted out of the water, things unloaded into our trucks & suv and then move them out of the gate before it locked.

Somehow, we managed to do this feat. Then, we spent another hour washing down the boat before parting. Jack had an all-day craving for fried chicken so I picked him up a box on the way home and I got myself some Chinese food. Between chips, lemonade and Chinese food, I swelled up huge and my fingers were numb. (Must. eat. healthier. on. fishing. trips!)

Maybe over the weekend, I'll show you the pictures that Jack took for me while I was picking up my Chinese food. He's a real comedian.

Happy Fishing Y'all. We probably won't be fishing this weekend or next. Lots of commitments.