Pipe Creek Yacht Club Beach Party
16 December 2010 | Pipe Creek to Black Point
December 9th and 10th Pipe Creek
We worked on boat projects, took dinghy rides around the area, and attended a beach party in the evening. "Night Hawk" and "Kokomo" caught up with us and found room to anchor behind the "Mice" with us. It's like old home week here.
Our VHF radio is not working... we can send with lots of power but can't receive so I made the trip this morning to attempt to get one ordered and flown in... and at this point am not having any luck with the phones out in both Samson and Staniel Cays.
December 11th to the 14th... Pipe Creek
On Sunday/ Monday night the wind slowly ramped up and around 2am the front hit us with 35 knot winds and squalls... I had put out another anchor to keep us from swinging into the shallow water to our east and the rocky island to the west but it was still scary to have that much wind screaming through the rigging for hours on end. I was up all night on anchor watch and was very happy to see the sun.
The wind never dropped below 25 knots on Monday and we had to forgo Roland's birthday party ... putting it off until tomorrow.
There were no waves so "Sapphire" rode smoothly enough to get some work done. We have been plagued for about 2 years with a very slow water leak which I finally tracked down to a supply line under the vanity in the head. I cut off the fittings and removed the pipe to find an area with two or three small holes. I cut the area out and put in a union before reconnecting everything. Finally, our bilge pump stopped going off every 4 hours and level of fresh water in our tank stayed up where it should.
Tuesday, Dec. 14 Pipe Creek to Big Majors....
"Fine Lion" was been anchored ahead of us in an area that was really narrow. They were forced to re-anchor during the height of the storm and a couple times more when the wind changed. They were going to have to move again today when the wind shifted to the north so they decided to head back to Big Majors ... We all were tired of the same scenery so a little before high tide we weighed anchor and motored south to Big Majors.
Wednesday 15th
After a great night of sleep... no anchor watches, and a good breakfast we dinghied in to the Yacht Club at Staniel Cay for a walk and some lunch. We stopped at the store for a couple of items and watched Oakland beat Tennessee on an afternoon replay. Steve had called for a beach party so we headed back to the boats around 2pm to find that our anchorage had grown from 6 to 25 boats. With the good weather, boats that had been holed up to our north all headed south and had decided to stop here for the night.
We had a nice time meeting folks at the party and chatted with "Discovery" who had sailed in with the fleet and planned on staying in the area for the Holidays.
Thursday, 16th
This morning we said good by to Pig Beach and headed south to Black Point to do some laundry and to say hi to friends.