Gentle Trails journal

The Gulf didn’t just want to test our stomachs; it wanted to test our patience. To a landlubber, a boat moves in a straight line, but the wind had other plans for the Morgan 51.

To keep the sails full and the boat stable, the Captain had to “tack,” zig-zagging across the map like a needle stitching a quilt. Every mile forward felt like two miles sideways.

It was an indigo marathon, and the finish line was nowhere in sight.”Are we there yet?” Asher asked for the hundredth time.”Not yet, little man,” Gordon replied, his eyes scanning the water. “But look at the neighbors.”

Suddenly, the gray-blue surface of the water shattered. A pod of dolphins appeared out of the deep, their sleek bodies slicing through the waves to ride our bow wake.

They looked up at us with clicking whistles, as if they were wondering why these slow-moving land creatures were so far from their trees.Then came the flying fish. They burst from the crests of the square waves like silver grasshoppers, gliding for impossible distances before vanishing back into the blue.

To Asher, it was a circus. To Moe, it was a reminder that we were trespassing in a world that didn’t belong to us.The sun climbed high, turning the indigo into a blinding, liquid sapphire.

The beauty was undeniable, but the fatigue was settling into our bones. The “Salty Crackers” were starting to look a little worn around the edges. We were seventy miles from the nearest brick, seventy miles from a solid chair that didn’t try to throw you off, and seventy miles from a tree.

“Thirty miles to the Fort,” the Captain announced, checking the charts.Thirty miles. In a truck, that’s a thirty-minute run to the store. Out here, at six knots against a stubborn current, it was a lifetime. Moe gripped the railing, her knuckles white. The ocean didn’t look majestic anymore; it looked hungry. Every time the Morgan plunged into a trough, the water rose up like it wanted to swallow the deck.We were tired, we were salt-crusted, and we were land-starved. We were praying for a miracle made of red brick to rise out of the empty circle of the world.