Thanksgiving In Paradise
(November 23, 2017) The day started off like every other day we’d experienced so far in the Sea of Cortes: warm and bright. We had a lazy morning, the girls playing dolls and legos, Rich probably doing something productive, and me probably not. It was one of the laziest days we could remember; no moving, no route planning, no weather checking, no schooling, no provisioning, no blogging, no cleaning… just relaxation. Oh, and play!
The special Thanksgiving dinner up at the restaurant wasn’t scheduled to begin until 6PM, but we put on our finest (which wasn’t all that fine), and headed to shore around 5PM for happy hour.
You wouldn’t know that Thanksgiving isn’t a Mexican holiday the way the restaurant did it for us. They had several turkeys roasting for hours; mashed potatoes; stuffing complete with nuts and cranberries; salad; rolls; and several pie options for dessert, including the necessary pumpkin. When it was time to eat, they had the buffet set, but the star of the show – the turkey – was missing. From the kitchen, we suddenly heard pots and pans banging in celebration, and out came a procession of the entire resort staff, with the Thanksgiving turkey at the front. Banging dishes rhythmically, the staff paraded around the restaurant before finally bringing the turkey to its place of prominence at the display table, and wishing all us guests a happy Thanksgiving. With that, dinner was served.
The girls insisted on having a kids’ table for Thanksgiving, so we put all five of them – Morgan, Ellie, Lucy, Emmy, and London – at their own table in the middle of the restaurant. London’s parents had their own family to dine with, and we were thrilled to be able to share our dinner of thanks with our new boat family on Taliesin Rose. After filling up on turkey and pie, the girls spent the rest of the evening running around the restaurant, upstairs and downstairs, trying to play pool, trying to play shuffle board, and finally building a fort underneath the shuffleboard where they used a stack of post-its to make doll-sized furniture. The girls were all sad to leave each other, and the strong bond our girls had formed with three-year-old (but mature!) London in just a few days was both pleasantly surprising and adorable.
You see, we’d left our dinghy fairly low on the beach. The surf was almost non-existent, and we were worried that the tide would go down too far, stranding our 250-pound dead weight high and dry on the beach. We don’t have wheels on our dinghy, so getting it off the beach and into the water is really, really hard with only two adults.
Unfortunately, the dinghy dug itself into the sand at the waterline, and then the surf had kicked up while we were at dinner. This meant that, for the last several hours, sand-filled waves crashed over the dinghy’s transom over and over again. The dinghy – including the battery and fuel tank – were completely full of water.
The hand pump we kept on board broke within the first few pumps. Meanwhile, the dinghy, now at least 350 pounds with water, was too heavy to budge. So, even though we managed to splash a bit of water out of the dinghy, the ocean casually sent wave after wave upon us, to crash over the transom and fill it right back up.
Eventually, Rich and I managed to get the dinghy spun around in-place, so that at least the waves were hitting the bow and deflecting rather than spilling in over the back. We splashed as much water as we could out of the dinghy, alternating between splashing water out and inching into deeper water, for over 15 minutes. Eventually, the dinghy was only about halfway full, and it was floating, and we couldn’t get it any emptier, so wearing our finest (which, luckily now, wasn’t that fine), we hopped in. The girls were confused and worried and crying. I was wet up to my chest. Rich was struggling to see in the pitch black night, lest he pilot us wrong and we get completely rolled by the oncoming surf. We were all shin-deep (actually, the girls were knee-deep) in the low-riding tub, slowly plowing the water as we made our way home. The ride was cold and wet and long, but eventually we made it. We dripped our way onto the back swim step, and then the boat. It was dark enough that I shed most of my wet layers in the cockpit, and so did the girls. Exhausted, but still glowing with holiday warmth from our dinner, we made our way to bed.
