Errands

Last night, just after we turned off the light to go to sleep we heard a  boom...Boom...BOOM...boom boom against the hull on my side of the v-berth. It was loud!  We both knew it was the mooring ball banging up against the boat but I couldn’t understand why it would be doing that. There was still a fair amount of wind that should have overcome the effect of the current. George went up on deck and managed to get the mooring ball over to the other side. It worked for a minute, the boat sat behind the mooring ball. Then, a few minutes later-boom...boom...BOOM on his side of the v-berth. We knew we couldn’t sleep with that racket going on so we turned on the light, grabbed our books and started reading. A short time later the current must have eased up and the banging stopped. Fortunately, it didn’t start up again with the next tide change six hours later. 

We left Cambridge Cay mid-morning today with the hope of getting some diesel and groceries at Staniel Cay. Once we arrived at Staniel we looked around for a place to anchor temporarily while we did our errands. There was enough of a NW wind to kick up quite a chop in the area between the Big Majors anchorage and Staniel Cay. We ended up at an anchorage known as “Downtown” in Active Captain but we call “Behind the Rocks”. It is a tight space between three large rocks and a beach off of town. Like most anchorages close to town it is quite shallow. We were in a race against the clock to get our errands done before low tide. George got the dinghy in the water in record time. He drove me to the beach so I could walk to the store. He then dinghied over to Staniel Cay Yacht Club with four jerry cans to buy 20 gallons of diesel. As I was walking to the store I said hello to a man riding a bike. He said hello but gave me a very funny look. I then noticed that I was still wearing the gloves I wear when operating the lines to get the outboard on the dinghy. In my haste I had forgotten to take them off before I got into the dinghy. As I approached the Blue Store I saw a couple coming out with two large bags of groceries. A very good sign!  When I went in I saw the owner still unpacking boxes of food. Yay!  I bought two heads of lettuce, tomatoes, carrots and a zucchini. The cucumbers looked nice but I decided to pass up the $5.00 price tag this time. I walked back to the beach and a few minutes later George came by with the diesel. He took the jerry cans to Breeze On and then came back to the beach to get me. We quickly pulled the outboard off of the dinghy. We still had 1/2 hour before low tide. Not bad!  We pulled up the anchor and, as I was maneuvering around to leave, I went aground. Ugh!  I was able to get free, after churning up a lot of sand, and we motored over to Big Majors where we will spend the night. 

Pulling up the anchor from “Behind the Rocks”. Big Majors is the land you see in the distance. The water is much choppier between the rock and Big Majors than it looks in this photo.