Convinced we were way ahead of schedule, Andre had veered off course for several hours, angling our heading toward what appeared to be a safe harbor.    What he didn’t realize is that there was not a single docking area, fueling station, or marina within miles of this “harbor”; a sure sign that this was an area where there is no boating activity due to dangerous conditions.

Exhausted from pulling a nauseous all nighter with large swells, Andre handed me the wheel and went to sleep.  I desperately searched for a straight route out with no success, but back tracking was out of the question as I would have had to travel backwards for many hours.  The only way out of that mess was to navigate in a jigsaw puzzle-like path in order to avoid running aground.    Making matters worse, at a very slow speed, chart plotters do not show an accurate heading.  With zero visibility, and no heading on the chart plotter, I had to increase Aleph Tav’s speed in order to get an accurate heading and navigate out of there…

A message flashed on the screen, WARNING: danger area.  Depths shown are inaccurate due to tide shifts and currents!

One thing the chart plotter did show accurately, was a sunken ship yards from our location…

“OK FATHER… Here we go again… HELP!!!…”  I cried out loud.  At that, a large swell lifted us up and dropped us with a loud THUD on a sandbar sideways.  Another large swell spun Aleph Tav around placing our aft (rear end) in the direction of the coming waves.  Another large swell rolled right over our rear deck, pouring a gush of water through our bedroom hatch over Lisa who was hanging on for dear life.  Noah screamed, as the salon stairs went flying along with everything else in the boat.

It is difficult to imagine anything more traumatic than the situation we were in, yet something much worse happened…  I heard what sounded like a crunching sound of rocks beneath us.  Under a normal situation, this would certainly be the end of Aleph Tav, but our situation is far from normal… Just as I began contemplating getting every one into Navi, another large swell lifted our aft high, pulling Navi beneath it and smashing the small boat’s bow as it came down and into deep water…

The ocean was smooth as with very high swells as we motored off.  I checked for breaches in the hull, but there were none;  Not a single crack, or leak, just a few scratches where Aleph Tav came down on Navi.

Lisa peeked out of our comfy sleeping bag: “I think I’m traumatized…” she whispered as I held her for some time.

Snap… Snap…SNAP… “Now what???” I exclaimed as I looked toward the source of the piercing sound.  The swells were so high, all three lines towing Navi snapped, leaving the battered boat adrift in the thick fog… With Noah and Gabriel keeping an eye on Navi, Andre making numerous passes with Aleph Tav, and yours truly leaping though the air onto the small boat with a very large rope, we rescued Navi once again.

We rolled smoothly over the continuous swells and returned to our proper course.  No one spoke a word for hours.  Then Andre broke the silence:  “I can’t believe I almost frik’n killed my whole family… I’m not touching anything on this boat for the rest of the trip!”

Navigating slowly through the canal where we would find a safe harbor, we looked intently ahead trying to see through the fog.  Our radar and hard wired radio had gone offline due to all the bouncing we went through when we ran aground.

Andre, forgetting his vow not to touch anything for the duration of the trip, picked up the hand held VHF radio and turned it on…

To be continued