Here’s to hoping your week has been pleasant so far. Ours is fine at this point, but we grounded the boat hard yesterday and were stuck for over an hour just a few hundred yards from one of our favorite anchorages.
Some new friends on a boat named TRINITY sent us the mobile phone images above and below. The one above shows ONWARD stranded on the hill that was hidden below the water, while the one below shows us after we broke free and headed toward the anchorage the right way.
I’m somewhat embarrassed to say it, but I was at the helm when we hit the bottom and the only reason we hit was because I had neglected my own long-held practice of scrutinizing the charts before the passage, thinking I could rely on my memories from the four or five other times we’ve anchored here to get me through.
Thank goodness it was soft and not stone.
In the end, I took a shortcut and it cost my wife and me precious time and energy that we could have both used doing more productive things.
If there were rocks below instead of mud–the place we were entering is called “Rock Piles” so there are a lot of large rocks, many of which are hidden beneath the surface–this could have been all she wrote for ONWARD.
We were blessed to have found a muddy spot, otherwise it could have been disastrous.
Anyway, shortcuts will do that to you. They have the potential to end in disaster whether you’re in a boat, flying a plane, driving a car, operating an arc welder, drilling teeth, or sitting at your desk.
Shortcuts can even be harmful to your relationships.
Sometimes shortcuts work.
But sometimes they don’t.
The best advice is to avoid shortcuts unless you’ve truly engaged in a deep analysis of what you’re thinking you want to do and have determined that it is really the best way.
Sometimes, shortcuts aren’t shortcuts at all.
