I never said He controls everything. I said He controls the big stuff.

I would amend my analogy, however, because I do think it presented less free will than I believe we have: The boat has sails. We can mostly control where we go, but we depend on the wind and the water to some degree. Both of which are out of our control. In the end, the wind and the water will guide us all to the Second Coming of Christ, no matter what we do.

And what is your logical basis to claim that God interfering or controlling things in His the day-to-day lives of His creation is a fundamentally silly idea?

Edit: further, you can witness your conception of what free will is. What if your conception is wrong? What is free will? The will to choose what I believe? To choose my actions? To control the world around me with my actions/beliefs?

We can't go back in time and do something different, so we can't know if doing something different would change the outcome of anything. Especially on the large scale. That doesn't mean we don't have free will. We can still control what we believe and control our actions, but why must having control over those things require that we can control the path the world is on? Or our own lifelong destiny, for that matter? I see no logical issue with God having a plan for the world and the world more or less following that plan, with slight-to-moderate deviations as a result of free-will.

Nor do I see an issue with free-will and destiny. We could certainly have a general life path that we will follow, and have the free will to control our lives within that path. To a significant degree, even. But that doesn't have to change the major points.