Day Eight: OMG, What were we thinking?

It's only 11 am, and I'm thanking sweet Jesus to be alive.  Okay, you know by now that I can exaggerate and Terry would say, that was fun!  And Ray Sharp would say--Those waves were pretty sporty, eh? But good grief, going around the point at the end of Great Sand Bay was really scary!  But we have been rescued by Doug and Nancy Sherk who have a clothes drier AND wifi!

Here we are with their son Ben, in their lovely home between Great Sand Bay and Cat Harbor, with Evan taking the photo.

Now back to yesterday:  we left the Fitzgerald around 5 pm in intense sunshine, coasting along the sand, hailed by the Campbell-Olsiewskis (forgive me for that spelling) who were basking on the beach

on to our friends Craig and Jeannie Kurtz's cottage where we were made welcome by the whole family including their daughter and friends and their dogs.

This is their dog Teddy, pretending to be a cat.

We were made comfortable for the night, after watching the sunset and sitting just a while in their sun-warmed sauna there on the beach.

We had a great breakfast of waffles made by Daughter Leah,

Yum!

Visited the neighbors Marianne and Al Brokaw in the sweet addition they've built.

It was grey and windy when we cast off, but the wind was heading mostly in the same direction we were and the waves weren't all that big, so we said well, if they get too big, we can always stop, plenty of take-out places.  HA!  Things were good until about opposite the monks' basilica and I yelled at Evan to try taking a photo of the dome with my waterproof camera, and he yelled back, are you kidding?  I'm fighting to stay afloat here!

Yes the waves were huge and we were riding them with stability in our big flat- bottomed boat, but Evan, in his little speedy kayak, without a rudder, was just bouncing all over the place.  We managed to fly right on past the sand beach, but when we had to get around the point with big breakers slamming over our hull, I was worried, and kept telling myself what Libby had said, you gotta relax into the wave.

Evan said later that he realized that neither of us would be able to do much to help the other if something bad happened here, but at the same time he wished he had one of those helmet cameras because it was thrilling to watch us bouncing and wallowing.  Terry just kept saying he was having fun!

And here I need to give some credit to my husband; he really is an expert kayaker and kept the kayak steady even in those huge rollers--were they over four feet tall?  I'm exaggerating again.  But Terry is the best!

Cat Harbor!  Yeay!  We surfed in, and only then realized that it was raining and we were soaked to the bone, we'd seen Doug Sherk's house and we just walked here.

The waves haven't decreased yet but we're still hoping they might and we'll get to Silver Island this evening.  Once launched again we think it should only take an hour and a half or so..

Onward!