Roque

Today we aimed to do an all day passage. It started with an early start. (Duh.) Followed by a boring school day, featuring math, science, and many more all-new dumb features, including editing blog posts, minimal reading time during school, and zero fun. (Minus art. Art’s fun.) Anyway, we succeeded in the all day passage part. A little more than halfway through, when we were about to go under a bridge, dad sensibly thought to double-check the bridge height on the chart. When doing this, he realized that the bridge height was only 39 ft, when EXIT was 63 ft. He quickly turned around and redid the route so we didn’t go through those dang bridges, and by this “little” mistake, he added 2 hrs. to our already long trip. But accidents happen, no? [Editor’s note: Yes, route-planning mistakes were made, though I prefer to think of them as “non-catastrophic learning opportunities”. -dw] When we got there, we saw the acclaimed “Mile Long Beach.” This made the long journey worth it. It was beautiful. All white sand, another when you anchor there, you hear the waves crashing. Slowly rising, peaking, and dying out, this beatiful white noise occurred about every 5 seconds.

The beach at Roque.

Then I suggested that we get on our wetsuits and flippers, and snorkel over there. Me and my big mouth. I got in, swam a lap, and got out, shivering and teeth chatttering. I decided the water was TOO COLD. But, of course, after I had suggested the idea, Dad wouldn’t let me stay on the boat. So, I got on my snorkel mask, and swam over. IT WAS REALLY COLD. On the way there, when we were almost to the beach, I decided to go turbo. I kicked like heck for a few minutes, then wondered why I wasn’t there yet. I surfaced, and realized I had been kicking in the wrong direction. So I adjusted, and kicked for a bit, surfaced, adjusted, kicked for a bit, surfaced, adjusted, kicked for a bit, surfaced, adjusted, kicked for a bit, surfaced, adjusted, kicked for a bit, surfaced, adjusted, kicked for a bit, surfaced, adjusted, kicked for a bit, surfaced, and realized I could stand up to my knees in water at that depth. I looked around, and realized I was right next to the beach.

I proceeded to sit down and make drip castles. If you don’t know, drip castling involves picking up a handfull of wet sand and dripping it so that the wet sand drops are arranged in a tower-like formation. The sand there was perfect. It was really fine, like granulated sugar (but of course it didn’t dissolve), but not too fine, like dust. This is good because rough sand doesn’t drip castle well, and the second a single drop of water hits too fine sand, it turns into paste. While I was in Hawaii, I had developed a technique of drip WALLing – to create walls – because drip castles are more like towers. I made one of these here, but was jealous of Dad’s really tall one. I tried to rival it, but failed.

After that we swam back. The sun had just gone down, so it was EVEN COLDER! When we got back I had a long, hot shower, but somehow, my feet mostly, and everything else a little too, remained cold. Thankfully, Mom had made enchiladas for dinner. They were good, and I ate a bunch, but even after that, AND swaddling myself in blankets, AND a hot cup of tea, AND the heater on, my feet were still cold next morning.

The next day, we rowed over to the beach in our dinghy. It was really fun. In the morning, it was really foggy, so we didn’t go, but later in the afternoon it cleared up enough to convince Dad to go. We went there during low tide. During low tide, the shingle* section of the beach – which is deep underwater at high tide – was somehow draining water very slowly

Also, during this time we met a french family on another french boat named “Kejedenn.” Like a mountain, apparently. While we were at the beach, they invited us over to have dinner on their boat. We went back to EXIT, got changed, and rowed over to their boat. It was like ours, but shorter and wider and painted orange. Inside, the layout was like ours but everything was sideways. Oh, and they didn’t have a fridge. By some magical way, they had gone 2 or 3 weeks at a time without re-provisioning. Anyway, we got on and they served us a bunch of really small slices of bread with paté and assorted other things on top. It was delicious! My favorites were the ones with dill on top. After that Mom and Dad proceeded to drink lots of fancy alchoholic beverages for about an hour. Around 9, they brought out some pasta. By 9:30, we were just getting into the dinghy, and by 9:45 I was finally in bed. Pretty good for 2 days, if I do say so myself.

The next day we returned to the beach and using my semi-godly powers, I lifted the great city Driptopia up out of the earth, to populate the beach.

*Course rounded detritus or alluvial material espicially on the seashore that differs from ordinary gravel only in the larger size of the stones. Excerpt from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

Syndicated from Soren’s Realm.