Hello! Hey, it’s Me.

An ocean(ish) adventure x2

Yesterday Gumpa took us all out to lunch on the boat. Colin talked about “boatride” with “Gumpa” for a good month or two after the last one, so he was SUPER excited to be going out again. We boated up the sound to Beaufort (about a twenty minute ride), had lunch, hit the library, and tootled back. Both children drove, which was pretty exiting for Delaney, since she opted not to drive last time. She did pretty good! She followed the boat in front of us with some over-corrective steering, but she had the right idea (unlike Colin, who has a propensity for right turns).

But the big adventure…the boat started sinking! We were about half way out of the creek toward the sound when Gumpa shouted, “We’re SINKING!” Apparently the boat mechanics forgot to put the plug back in, and we were taking on water pretty quickly. Luckily Gumpa had an extra plug, and saturated his shirt up to the underarm to plug the hole. It took another 10 or 15 minutes of hand pumping and bilge pumping to clear out the water. We had to make an emergency landing at someone’s pier, but we didn’t have get off the boat. But we were late to lunch.

Today we went to the ocean…the OCEAN! Everyone swam. Everyone. Colin, Delaney, Chris and I. It was so. much. fun!

There was a lot of this:

and this

and this

(ahem - note the sand-flinging above)

and this

Colin hasn’t been as keen about ocean swimming as Chris, Delaney and me, but after today, I don’t know that we’ll be able to keep him out! He spent a ton of time wading around IN the waves and “jumping” over incoming waves and floating around. The water was unbelievably clear - we could see the fish swimming just a few feet from our feet - and shallow; the waves were small and calm.

Here’s the little beach comber discovering shells