Rode Hard and Put Away Wet

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

We all slept like babies.  It was awesome.  The air conditioning did a great job and the Norman Cay Marina was super still and quiet once the party boat went to bed.  

Nathan, Dave and I got up roughly at 7.  We went out to the cockpit and opened up the boat.  The day was super overcast and it looked like it had possibly rained in the night.  Dave and I swabbed the deck, and Nathan set about making us coffee. 

Grant got up shortly after 7, and helped us finish the swabbing.  Right around the time we had gotten the deck clean, the rain started.  We still needed to pay for the marina slip so, Dave, Nathan, and I got our rain jackets on and walked over to the marina office.

  

Once we were paid up, we walked back to the boat and made a breakfast of bacon, fried eggs and toast.  The rain was really coming down and accompanied by thunder and lightning.  We began talking about alternative plans just in case we don’t make it to our destination today.  

Soon enough though, the storm and sky lightened and we readied the boat to set sail.  We exited the marina like pros, and Dave looked over to me and said “I do know how to do this.”

We motorsailed to the ocean side of the Exuma Island chain, and watched as the depth became unreadable.  The rain had mostly stopped, but there was also no wind.  

We weren’t necessarily losing time, but the storm this morning had set us back.  We began discussing skipping the Staniel Cay stop, which meant no swimming pigs and no Thunderball Grotto.  We voted and settled on continuing on to Staniel Cay, even though it might mean we have a long day today.

Right after lunch, we saw a beach on Warderick Wells Cay, and decided to set the anchor so we could swim and snorkel.  We made two attempts at setting the anchor and neither one held.  Not wanting to give up on swimming and snorkeling, Dave offered to stay on the boat wile the rest of us swam.

Grant was the first in the water and immediatly he began drifting away from the boat and away from the beach in the swift current.  Seeing his effort, I got in and immediately set about to swim directly toward the beach.  The water was not all that warm, and I decided pretty quickly that the current was too strong and I headed back to the boat.  Nathan ended up not going in the water, but Todd did.  

We were all sorta struggling with the current.  Grant and Todd in the water, and Dave trying to keep the boat and swimmers together in the swift moving but shallow water.  We may or may not have given the sand a love tap with the keel, which freaked out those of us who were on the boat.  We decided it was high time to get the heck out of there, so Todd and Grant swam back to the boat.  Todd was able to swim straight for the boat and get on, but Grant was further away and since we were struggling with both shallow water and current, Dave had Nathan deploy the throwable life preserver to Grant, and we hauled him in that way.

By that time, it was roughly 2:30, and our anxiety level was pretty high, so we got the heck out of there as calmly and quickly as we could.  The route to Staniel Cay at this point crosses with the current to the shallow side of the Exumas. 

The brief bit of sun we had for the swim started to disappear, and the wind was cranking!  We reefed the main and the jib sails and we made great time.  We were heeled over 10 – 15 degrees, with a balanced helm, going up to 8 knots in wind that gusted up to 25 knots.  We surfed the waves and had a blast!

We sailed for a few hours like this, and noticed a squall was building behind us.  We got the cockpit cleaned up and our rain jackets on in anticipation.  We hoped to get to Staniel Cay and grab a mooring ball before the storm came through.

We did see some lightning, but from a storm standpoint it wasn’t too bad. We had no issues getting into Staniel Cay, but oh man was it busy and full of boats.  Finding a free mooring ball was going to be a challenge.   We were all silently coming to grips with the possibility of spending the night at anchor and losing sleep on anchor watch.

Luck was on our side, because we were able to find what was probably the last mooring ball.  That was where our luck ended however because it took a number of passes and failed attempts at trying to grab the mooring ball before we found success.  At one point, we had Grant in the dingy behind the boat trying to grab the mooring ball, but we quickly decided that was not a great idea.  Round and round we went trying to grab the mooring ball.  Thankfully none of our neighbors were out in their cockpits watching the fiasco.

In the end, we got tethered to the mooring ball, and the only thing damaged was our pride, and maybe a boat hook that got lost to sea.  

Grant prepared dinner, and we had another crew discussion about what went well and how we could improve upon the day.

Tomorrow is another day and another adventure or two.