Cruise to Palatka FL and the marinas there.

Stuart is quite a distance from Palatka where we were going.

We took the inter coastal waterway to get there.
It would have been closer on the open seas but because of the age of the boat and the rougher water in the Atlantic better to go the inter coastal. And you have more scenery to see.

Most of the time we traveled at daytime so that we could see the route better.
The channel was marked pretty good with poles and buoys. There was one turn though that had a mud bar on it at low tide and we got stuck.

A boat came but we were on it pretty hard, I got out and sank in the mud passing the rope.
We spent the night and the next morning the tide was better and got off of it with a little help.

On the way again we made it to the marina, it was in the middle of Palatka FL town which is small.
So things were okay,


The joyride
Mom had her VW beetle there, it was bright yellow.Something like this.

So being the teenager I was I would have to at least drive this one time on a night run.
 I got the keys and took it out by myself, it was pretty late. I drove around the town at around 130-200 in the morning. I decided though that my ride was not that discrete, I mean how easy would it be to sneak around in a bright yellow beetle. I returned to the marina.My adrenaline rush was complete.Or maybe so.

The Sunfish

So one day at the marina I decided to take out the sunfish. Okay what is a sunfish? No it's not just the salt water fish or opo, it's a small sailboat that has one sail on it and is fiberglass with a wood rudder and a centerboard. The sail is at an angle and there is just about enough room for one or two small people to squeeze on to the deck cockpit.Like this one, wait did not have that girl with me though?
And no fish on my sail either this picture is so 70's ...ahhh still cool

The stuck sunfish....
So one day it was very gusty winds, excellent for the sunfish pilot myself to challenge. So for about the first 45 minutes I was quite a sight for entertaining the marina people if they looked out there.
I was flying very fast in the 25+ winds and then things went badly. The boat turned over and I could not get it back up. I tried to swim down the mast was stuck in the mud. Then I swam down again and as I was pulling the mast out of the mud, my feet were getting stuck in the mud up to my knees.
So giving up I was laying across the sunfish deck feeling the chilly wind and rain. After a while I saw a small boat come out. A guy in a dinghy was nice enough to help me out, he threw a rope and we pulled out the sunfish to better waters, back to the safe haven of the marina. By that time I was chilled pretty good.