Saturday, April 14, 2007

AN UNEXPECTED EVENT

At 12:00 am, the ANCHOR ALERT, signaling that our anchor had moved, awakened us. The winds had picked up to 21 knots, so we had to go out in the rain to lift the anchor and drop it again, but it didn’t hold after two more tries, so we decided to take off at that time of the night, in choppy waters. Happily with the aide of the AUTOMAATIC PILOT and GPS, we had no problems. We took turns watching the screen and checking the radar, in case there were other vessels close to us. El MICO has every gadget known to man, and back-ups for just about every one of them.

It was a long night of rough waters and strong winds, but the stability of a catamaran is remarkable. Although we were banged around a few times, we never felt scared. Once the sun came up, we were able to set the Genoa (main sail) and we continued to our destination with both sail and engines. We arrived at Great Harbor Cay at 3:30 pm.

The island is all coral, with few sandy beaches and very clear waters. We had heard that the weather was going to get bad, so we wanted to moor the boat in a secluded place. We found a lovely harbor, at Harbor Cay Marina, where the captain was very friendly and helpful. The place has all the facilities of the marinas we know in Europe, such as showers, laundry, electricity and water.

After a good night sleep, Libia and I did a couple of loads of heavy laundry, and after lunch, we washed down the boat completely. It is incredible how bad salt water is, and how it gets into everything. It took us all afternoon to do it, but the boat is so immaculate now, that it was worth the effort. While we were out washing the boat, a couple of fishermen came by to offer us some lobster tails. We bought ten for $ 10.00, quite a good deal, since yesterday they had offered us some for $ 5.00 a tail.

Tomorrow we plan to go into the village in the morning with our bikes, and then take the boat south to a place between Hoffman’s and Devil’s Cays. It is supposed to be a fabulous place to fish, snorkel, walk the beaches, and plain relax. The winds will be subsiding, so it should be good sailing for us.

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