An Embarrassment of Mangoes by Ann Vanderhoof Page A

our keel is firmly stuck in a ridge of sand that the current had deposited along the channel’s inside edge.
    We don’t know
Kairos
, don’t think we’ve even seen the boat before this afternoon. But, like us, they have been waiting for the Wrightsville Beach bridge to open. It’s the second in a particularly odious one-two combo of bridges. The first opens on the half-hour; this one opens only on the hour; and with 4.8 nautical miles between them, it’s impossible for a sailboat to catch consecutive openings. We got to Wrightsville Beach with twenty minutes to wait before the next opening—twenty minutes for Steve to circle in a narrow channel with a lively breeze and an even livelier current pushing us around—and now, hard aground.
    “I don’t think I can tow you off.”
Kairos
on the radio again, a male voice, with a bit of a twang, apologetic, as if it’s his fault for leading us astray. “If I get close to you, I’m afraid I’ll go aground too.”
    “Tell him no problem,” Steve says to me. “And tell him to
get going
or he’ll miss the bridge and have to wait another hour, too.”
    Steve has raised the mainsail and unfurled the jib, sheeting them both in tightly to heel
Receta
over to one side and lessen our draft. One side of the deck is now almost touching the water. But his tactics aren’t working: The current is too strong, pushing us farther into the sand. Unlike on Worton Creek, we can’t just wait for the tide to rise: It will be well after dark by then, and it would be decidedly unwise to spend the night parked in a channel.
    “TowBOAT U.S., TowBOAT U.S., this is
Receta
.” It’s time for professional help.
    Five minutes later, the nice men from TowBOAT U.S. have pulled up alongside—seems this is a popular spot for them to wait for business—and it takes them a scant twenty minutes more to “prop-wash” the sand out from under
Receta
and tow us free, giving us plenty of time to circle some more before the next bridge opening. When the driver hands me their bill for $432, I hand it back with a demure smile—and our no-limit towing insurance card. “
Everybody
goes aground at some point on the ICW,” experienced cruisers had told us way back in New York. “If we see you later and you tell us you didn’t go aground, we’ll know you’re liars. Buy towing insurance.” The official TowBOAT U.S. card had caught up with us via a mail drop from home just days before.
    We’re still rehashing our no-harm-done-to-wallet-or-boat adventure—“only to my ego,” mutters Steve—as we get settled in the anchorage on the other side of the bridge. “Hey,
Receta
, catch. You need these.” Two cans of Coors fly from a dinghy into our cockpit. Which is how we make face-to-face acquaintance with Todd and Belinda on
Kairos
.
    First-time cruisers just a few years younger than we are, they too had decided to take a time-out from careers that were growing increasingly stressful. He is gregarious, upbeat, quick to laugh, a practical, hands-on, do-it-yourself guy—and a gentle romantic. He had proposed to Belinda on the bow of their boat as they were sailing along the western shore of Chesapeake Bay, their home waters—on a day he just happened to have a minister friend in the cockpit who could perform the ceremony when she said yes. Belinda, meanwhile, is his perfect foil: She seems quiet at first, almost subdued, and then slowly reveals a steel-trap mind, and a sly and wicked wit. We like them immediately.
    Their break is open-ended. “We’ll see how we feel, how we like cruising, how the money holds out,” Todd says. For Belinda, heading off on a sailboat was as much a leap of faith as it had been for me. She seems to have no more confidence in her sailing abilities than I have, and just as many anxieties. Their short-term plan is much the same as ours too: Florida by Christmas, the Bahamas in the New Year, and then, as hurricane season approaches, decide where to go next.
    We don’t see