The Best Plan Never Made

Sometimes the best plans are the ones that we never make, because we trust that they are God’s plans.

We left Melbourne this morning, making our way to Key West. We’re taking our time getting there.  We’ll stop to see my dad’s cousin Patty tomorrow and my friend and brother from another mother, Anthony Henderson on Tuesday.

We’ll be in a campground in Key Largo on Wednesday and then we have a dockside waterfront site at Boyd’s Campground in Key West from January 14^th through the 21^st.

Today was special. Bittersweet to an extent.  We had to say good-bye to my Aunt Sally and Uncle Randy, who have been gracious enough to allow us to stay in their yard for the past 6-1/2 weeks.  It is the longest time that we’ve been in one place since we started this journey in August.  It will also be their address that we’ll be using as our domicile.  We’ll see them again in a few weeks, but it was still tough to say good-bye.  We’ll be back in Melbourne in early February to transfer our RV registration and tags.  We got our Florida driver’s licenses this past week and our passports have also been ordered for renewal.

We stopped by my cousin Jenny’s work and got breakfast and hung out with her for awhile before heading down A1A to the Sebastian Inlet.  We wanted to stop by Sebastian Inlet to say hi to my mom. She always loved going there when she was alive.  When I was a kid, she would borrow my brother’s Triumph, and her and I would take our golden retriever, Lady down there.  We would go to the Indian River Swimming Cove on the river side of the inlet.  Lady and I would run through the water and play for hours on end, and my mom would dig for clams.  The days that we spent at the inlet were truly some of the best memories of my childhood.  My mom loved the Sebastian Inlet so much that she had requested to have her ashes spread in the Atlantic Ocean, just off of the Sebastian Inlet when she passed away.

In June of 2005, about five months after my mom had passed, we had a family reunion in Melbourne.  We had received my mom’s ashes from the funeral home by that point, so we asked our Uncle Tom to rent us a boat so that we could fulfill my mom’s wishes.  Nine of us boarded a pontoon boat in Melbourne with my mother’s ashes in hand and started the trek down the Indian River to the Sebastian Inlet.  Traveling down the river was calm, however, as we got closer to the inlet and the ocean, we could see that the water was pretty rough.

As I look back now, I know that the Lord was watching over us that day.

The Sabastian Inlet is one of the most dangerous inlets on the east coast.  An old article that I had found from the Orlando Sentinel starts out by describing the inlet like this…

“To thousands of boaters, this man-made channel is a pathway to angling paradise, promising access to some of the best fishing in the state.

For many, it will become a horror beyond their worst nightmare – a belching monstrosity that tosses 2,000-pound boats about like matchsticks.

In a good year, only 15 or 20 boats will sink or be bashed against the inlet’s giant boulders. In bad years, the total might reach 200.

Veteran boaters call Sebastian ‘a bad, dangerous inlet – the worst in the state.’ Some think it might be the worst on the Atlantic Seaboard.

To the unsuspecting, Sebastian Inlet is a sneaky, deceptive adversary. Its waters can seem as placid as an inland lake, punctuated by only gentle, rolling swells.

Yet twice each day, its character undergoes a Jekyll-Hyde transformation. The change is almost imperceptible at first but magnifies as each outgoing tide rushes through the inlet’s narrow throat to collide with an immovable ocean.

Tons of water accelerate to speeds of 5 to 10 miles per hour, then slam into the ocean waves and rebound.

Once gentle swells become 4- and 5-foot waves crashing first one way then another, as if in a giant washing machine. At certain times, when wind conditions are right, waves can build to 7 or 8 feet.

‘At times, the mouth of that inlet is like a giant maw, with teeth just waiting to grab you,’ said Tom Lawton, a retired Air Force colonel who serves on the Sebastian Inlet Commission. ‘They are not regular waves – it is as close as you can imagine to two giant claws waiting to grab you. It’s a bad, dangerous inlet – the worst in the state.’”

Thankfully, I only read this article a little while ago and not the night before we were heading out to spread my mom’s ashes in the ocean.

As we approached the inlet, my Uncle Tom told us that there were 5- to 6-foot swells, I honestly wasn’t even sure what that meant, I was just looking out at how rough the waters were at the time.

As we creeped closer, my Uncle Tom asked us, “Well, what do you guys want to do?”  He also reminded us that once we start to run the inlet, there was no turning back until we got through it.

Someone suggested that we could spread the ashes where we were in the river, but my brother said, “She wanted them in the Atlantic Ocean, not the Indian River.”

After that, my cousin Bev, said to my brother, “C’mon Donnie, where’s your sense of adventure?”

At that point, my brother said, “Let’s do it.”

My Uncle Tom obliged, throttled up and started to run the inlet. My cousin Bev, my brother, and I were all at the front of the boat as we headed out to the ocean.  We hit the first wave, got soaked and somehow Bev went from the front of the boat with us to the back of boat quicker than you could blink and eye.  Something that my brother and I will not let her live down in the 15 years since we did it.  Don, Jimmy, and I were soaked head to toe.  Somehow, we got through it, got far enough out into the ocean to spread the ashes and our uncle navigated us safely back through the inlet and into the Indian River.

The next day, my brother and I had lunch with his friend Steve and we were telling him the story.  Steve started to respond by saying, “Oh, 5- to 6-foot, that’s not too bad…,” when my brother quickly interjected, “We were in a pontoon boat.”

“…well, that changes everything.” Steve chuckled.

We’ve told this story many times at family gatherings.  We laugh about it, we cry sometimes, we never miss an opportunity to take a jab at Bev for bailing out on us and asking her what happened to her sense of adventure after we hit that first wave, but today, I got a new sense of appreciation of what we did.

As Sandy and I walked around the inlet today and out onto the jetty, I realized just how fortunate we were that day.  The water was much like it was that day in June of 2005.  I noticed boats come down the river near the inlet and then turn around back towards the river.  I didn’t see a single pontoon boat anywhere near the mouth of the inlet.  I didn’t have the same faith 15 years ago as I do now, but looking back, I know that the Lord was with us that day.  He gave us a great captain in my Uncle Tom and guided us out and back in safely.  He is always with us, even when we’re not necessarily walking with Him.

When we left this morning, we were only planning on spending a few hours at the inlet.  Sandy and I walked around the north side of the inlet for a while and then grabbed some lunch.  After lunch, we went back to the RV.  I got Youk and we walked a little over a mile on one of the trails.  I wanted to take him over to the swimming cove like I had done as a kid with Lady, but dogs are no longer allowed in that area.  Youk really didn’t seem to mind, he liked the trail that we walked on just fine.

When we finished our walk, we decided to check out the south side of the inlet before continuing to head south.  As we drove the RV through the park, we noticed how nice the campground was and that there were some sites open.  We didn’t have any reservations for tonight, we were just planning on boondocking in a parking lot or rest area for the night, so Sandy said, “We could just stay here for the night if you want.”

It kind of seemed like mom wanted us to spend the night, so we parked the RV and went into the Ranger’s office to see if they had any spots open.  Quite ironically, or maybe not so much, we got the last site available in the campground for the night.

Once we got set-up, we walked down to see a beautiful sunset over the Indian River before dinner.  We’re going to get up early and watch the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean tomorrow.  My mom always loved sunrises and sunsets, especially over the water.  She was with us tonight, she’ll be with us tomorrow, and if I had to guess, she’ll meet us in Key West too.

At our daughter, Kelly’s suggestion, we’re going to gather a little bit of sand from the beach tomorrow and put it in a jar.  I’ll give some to my brother the next time that we see him as well.  I think that we both know that she’s still here with us, but it never hurts to have those little reminders.

Funny how sometimes the best plans are the ones that we don’t make, they are truly God’s plans.