Spring Break

We went sailing, but you knew that. The problem with an extended sailing trip has been that the boat is a large boat and therefore has a tall mast. On both sides of us there are low bridges. So to get out of a fairly small area, we have to lower the mast, an operation which involves sort of tilting it backwards with a block and tackle apparatus.

Well, the setup on this boat is not really made to lower the mast very often. To wit, it involves feeding extra line into the main support cable for the mast by way of a pulley arrangement which is not actually fixed to anything. You have to hold it with your arms. Er. Dearly Beloved has to hold it with his arms, are you kidding? And Dearly Beloved had never done it before so was not keen on trying it for the first time as we passed under a low bridge in the middle of a shipping lane.

So originally we were going to stick close to home and just go into the woods with the boat. By Wednesday this was not working out all that well, as the boat is very deep and the woods are not. So there are only two places we can get close enough to shore to actually get on land. (Well, except by beaching the boat which has its own drawbacks.) And we don't have a little bitty boat, which is how everybody else seems to solve this problem.

So Wednesday while moored in the woods we decided to try the mast and it went okay. So Thursday off we went to go under the bridge. On the way under the first time all went well except for one small thing: a commercial boat passed us in just the right way as to cause a Very Large Swell which placed us in grave danger of clipping off the top part of the mast. I was in the back of the boat steering and it looked to me as though we were certainly going to clip the bridge. Dearly Beloved was looking on from the bow (holding onto the mast) and he says we were just barely not under the bridge when the wave hit, so the mast actually may have gone higher than the bridge and then dipped under on the downslope of the wave.

It made quite an impression on Eldest, who was next to me: he was whooping and hollering and that evening when he filled out the ship's log he drew a picture of a Ginormous commercial boat and our boat very tiny next to it and then many huge waves.

Youngest remained below for the trip under the bridge, reasoning that if the mast came off he would rather be inside when it did. He was quite certain the mast would either break off or fall down.

And then we went to Willemstad, a fairly small town which is mined, I mean mined with fortifications of various kinds dating from, oh, maybe 16th century to WWII. So the kids got to sit on the cannons:


And put thieves in the dock:


They also played for many hours in the underground bunkers which overlook the harbors. No pictures of that I am afraid, it's dark down there.