We left the Marsh Harbor marina around 10 am to head over to Hopetown, on Elbow Cay, just an hour or so away.

Nice skies, cool breeze, the perfect day for a short sail.

But nooooooo.

Just after leaving our slip, the boat is headed toward shore and Ed starts yelling about the steering.

What? I’m yelling back.

The boat is headed for a pier on shore with multiple old pilings in the way and a scary looking pile of craggy rocks.

I’m yelling “reverse, reverse,” as though he doesn’t know we’re headed right for the rocks.

“I can’t, I got no control,” he’s yelling back at me.

Oh shit. We are headed for those rocks.  

Meanwhile a young couple in a dinghy saw our pending crisis and tied up at the pier we were getting ready to crash into.  They were up on the pier ready for whatever they could do to help.

I sat down on the bow to brace myself for whatever was to come. Suddenly Ed was able to turn enough to avoid the rocks and, in neutral, the boat headed toward the pier. 

The next thing I knew we gently bumped the pier and the couple on the pier (Dutch, I found out later) were asking me to throw them a line.

I did, and looked astern to see Ed back there fending the boat away from the rocks.  He had jumped off the boat and another passerby was helping him keep it off.

The couple on the pier were yelling for another line and we eventually got both tied up so the boat was astride the pier and away from the rocks.

During all this our friend Chuck from the marina who had helped us get off the dock – saw our problems, heard the yelling and came running from the marina to help us.  

So we had 4 new friends giving us a hand.  The Dutch lady was more shook up than me.

Boaters do everything they can to help each other.  We’ve seen that before and we’ve done our share too.

It’s a bond when you keep a boat from crashing into rocks or piers.

I told Ed I didn’t care if the boat was damaged, I just didn’t want to hit another boat or people.

Toucan had no scars.

We were able to reach our mechanic from the boatyard and he came right away.  The problem was we had no reverse control on the starboard engine due to a broken cable line.  The wind and current had contributed to the loss of control.

John our trusty mechanic fixed it all and replaced the cable.

We were still a little freaked out when we left for Hopetown a couple hours later.

We got the last mooring ball at Hopetown after only a couple of tries.

Time to chill…..whew.