A 3 hour tour...a 3 hour tour

I got back from FL last night and here is the one story I will tell. On Sunday we rented a pontoon boat to go out on. The first thing that is written on the map provided is DO NOT GO OUT INTO THE GULF. Well, the first thing we did was go out into the gulf. As we were out there we noticed that a storm was approaching. A full fleged, back hand of God Thunderstorm. We decided that we should probably move our location to like...not is the middle of its path. We started back toward to dock which is about a 10 min ride for all boats but ours. OUR boat had a max speed of around 5 mi/hr. It was so slow that a boat getting towed back in pasted us. OUR boat was so slow that another boat passed us that was idling while we were going full throttle. Lets just say that I could have swam the butterfly faster than what OUR 50 hp motor could push a fly. So, as we are trying to make it back to the dock all kinds of boats were passing us creating wakes that tossed our tiny ship to and fro. And yes, we were headed straight into the perfect storm. ......You know how you hear the thunder after you see the lightening...well not for us, the thunder was simultaneous with the lightening. The lightening was so close that we smelled grilled grouper. Did I mention that we were in a metal boat in the middle of the ocean? I gave up driving and got the life jackets out and hunkered down. The rain was so thick that you could not see 30 yards in any direction and it felt like cannon balls hitting you in the face...even though we were only going 5 mph. We did not make it back to the dock..we gave up and headed toward a beach. We ran the boat up on the shore and ran to safety. We made it out safe..thanks to the courage of the fearless crew or the pontoon would've been lost....except Cara who ran over a cactus barefoot.