[wcconway]

and sailed from Mobile Bay to Orange Beach AL. Eight hours of sheer delight and terror as we made our first trip by ourselves on a sailboat. It was sunny, warm, light winds and comfortable seas. We managed to get out of the dock without incident, got fuel without incident, stayed on course and got docked without incident. WOW, life is good!

Day 2 didn't go so well.....touched a couple of humps on the bottom, dodged fishing boats anchored in the channel (argh!), put up too much sail and forgot to put the autopilot on standby to bring them down and thought we lost steering and of course it happened in front of a tug boat bearing down on us. Finally figured out the autopilot was on after contemplating a Mayday call, turned it to standby and cheated death at the last moment (ha ha). We then decided we would be power boaters for the rest of the day as we got our hearts back into a normal rytham. On the way home, we "accidently" got out outside the channel thinking we were dead in the middle and ran aground. Of course the first mate was at the helm so the Captain took over and masterfully (well, maybe panicfully) got us ungrounded. That location is now known as "Marker 57...make a call to Heaven". Anyway, the boat got back to the dock unscathed and in the words of my sailor dad, we now have a "cheated death again" story!