A Boat Trip Cancelled

On July 9th my dad and I woke up at 5am in plans to drive his 29 foot Hunt Harrier boat to Nantucket. For those of you who don't know Nantucket is a island off of Massachusetts. I probably should have mentioned this is previous blogs but I guess I assumed everyone already knew where it was. Anyway, at 5am we eat breakfast together and headed over to the Norwalk Yaht club in Norwalk, Connecticut. When we got to the boat at around 5:45 the clouds were blue and it looked like there were some dark ones in the distance. The harbour was as calm as can be so I expected to get out to Nantucket perfectly. Our plan was to drive up to Newport which would take around 7 hours and where we would have the boat serviced and then drive another three hours to Nantucket. My dad looked at the forecast in Newport and Nantucket and there was a small boat advisory because the ocean was full of big waves. We decided to take our chances anyway and as we set off everything looked to be going perfectly fine. We got about a mile out into the Long Island Sound and things started to look a little different. There were waves about three feet big and a north east wind going about 20 MPH. The wind was right in our face and the waves were absolutely pounding us. Our plan was to go about 25 knots the whole way and we were doing around 12 in this weather. We went for about an hour which brought us to 5 miles and the waves were not getting better, infact they were getting a little worse. They started to crash over our boat and things started to get a little scary. My dad looked at me and said "Coop I dont know if it's worth it." I couldn't agree more and we ended up turning around at about 6 miles into the trip. Im confident the boat could have taken the beating and we could have made it, I just don't think it was worth 12 hours of getting completely pounded. Between the plane ride and now the boat ride my experiences traveling to Nantucket this year have been quite interesting.

JULY 4th in VAIL, CO

For the July 4th Weekend I went out to Vail, CO with a lacrosse summer team called Merrill Lynch. I have been on this team and played in this tournament for two straight years now. Im not quite sure why it is called Merrill Lynch still because BOA bought it....who knows. Anyway I took a flight out there on Wednesday and met up with my teammates at the condo we were staying at that is called Mountain Haus. It has some beautiful condos that overlook a river and all the great mountains vail has to offer. On Saturday, July 4th I experienced a whole village getting together and celebrating the countries birthday. The streets were crowded and there was a parade full of police cars, fire trucks, horses and hundreds of people dressed in crazy outfits the celebrate this day. One of the coolest part of the day was seeing almost every single person wearing red, white and blue. Now I know its July 4th and everybody does it, its just for some reason I thought there were more people sporting our nations colors more then usual. After some of my teammates and I experienced this parade we walked around to all of the tents that were set up with various things in them: food, clothes, pictures and more food. Later in the day we had a game against "Jammin' Salmon" and beat them with ease. After the game we headed back to our condo where we participated in drinking games and bonded as a team and prepared for fireworks. Our condo had a porch on it and looks right at the mountains where the fireworks were going to go off. We all gathered around on the porch at about 10 PM and watched some beautiful fireworks.

June 11th: Plane Ride to Nantucket

On June 11th my dad and I set out for a trip to Nantucket in his small Cessna plane. My dad bought this plane a year ago and is meant for flying relatively short distances. It's a one engine plane that seats four including the pilot. I never really get nervous when flying but when I fly in this plane for some reason it always makes me a little nervous. We were taking off from Bridgeport, CT which is a close city from where I live. We got the the airport at around 8:45 AM and at that time the pilot told us there could be a delay because of heavy fog on the island. I didn't think much of it because there is always fog on and around Nantucket but I was in for a trip I will never forget.

We got delayed for about 15 minutes before we took off so I figured the fog had left the island. My dad let me sit in the co-pilot seat because he knew the pilot would let me fly it for a little once we were up in the air. I was wearing a head set that was on the same channel as the tower and it was a pretty cool experience getting to listen to one guy directing all of the air traffic. After we safely got up into the air the pilot let me take over. I was obviously nervous so I didn't fly it for too long but when your that high up in the air there is not much to do in terms of flying. Anyway, as we approached the island heavy fog was coming in quickly. It went from a bright and sunny day to us being in very thick fog. The pilot was telling me it is going to be a tough landing because the fog is so thick. This made me really nervous but at the same time it was cool because I could see how experienced or not this pilot was. As we approached the runway you literally couldn't see a thing and when we got to about 200 yards from the runway I was getting even more nervous. At about 100 yards we popped through the clouds, saw the runway and made a safe landing. It was a really cool experience I had because I have never been so nervous in my life/ learned that GPS probably just saved my life. I had a great weekend in Nantucket playing golf and hanging out at the beach. I will never forget this scary plane ride and everyone should be glad they weren't on it next to me.