Robin's Reports

RIDE IN from TOURNY
by Robin

We left off a couple days ago while we were all catching red snappers. Helen was pretty happy about her luck bottom fishing. I think Mike liked it too but maybe trolling is more his thing.


After we were all finished up with fishing, it was time to call the kids out of the tower. It's like their own mini-fort in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. They sure do enjoy themselves up there. (Excuse the water blurb there.)

My eldest climbs down. It may look like an easy feat but trust me, it is not. By the time you add in wave rocking, speed which the boat is traveling, wet or salty hands and pure end-of-the-day exhaustion, it can be a challenge.

It scares me to death to see my little one travel up & down but he's been very blessed so far to still maintain his death grip. One thing worse than going up & down the ladder while on the ocean.....going up & down the ladder while it sits on the shipyard blocks, after soaping & hosing down all the boat parts. I, all-of-a-sudden, got a huge fear of getting down the steps after I was all wet & sudsy in the tower. My heart fluttered and I had an adrenalin rush. The only reason why I'm still not up there today is because I didn't want my family to laugh at me.

Ok, back to the story, ..... son comes down ladder, son bends over side of boat, son proceedes to barf. I hate feeling to helpless in making his seasickness disappear. After it was out of his system, we sat down together and snuggled. I'm so glad he still snuggles at 11.5 yrs. I took this self-portrait of us.

Twenty miles and 50 minutes later, we make it to the mouth of Port Canaveral. Oh..... home port never looked so good. It had been close to 12 hrs on the water at this point. We passed 2 ships on the way in. Behind my son is the Disney cruise ship.

Once we clear the jetty rocks and we start getting into the heart of the channel, we have a No Wake zone. This one isn't for manatees, but rather because they want no horsing around while recreation boats are loading/unloading, cruisers are going by and commercial fishing boats are also thrown into the mix.

Below is a picture of our approach to the docks that we would have normally used IF we fished in our own boat. There were stories told that it took people 2 hrs to go from boat to loading because of the long tourny lines. I wish I had some ability for a wide-angle lens. This is a fraction of the boats waiting.

Here is another view looking back. Each white speck you see is another boat. It was insane. This is why we hate to fish Sat/ Sun.

We arrived back at the marina fuel dock about 5pm. There are 2 multi-million dollar yachts & a center console already tied up. Jack approached the dock perpendicular to parking it. It was the only way to fit a 32' boat in a space about 37' long.

I was scared to death but I held in my urges to scream as I sat on the front of Mike's boat, holding the dock line. ........ to be continued.