More New Friends
07 February 2011 | White Cay, Berry Islands, Bahamas
Jill
We decided to stay at the anchorage we were at rather than move near Jim and Judy today. We are more protected here and the anchor does seem to have a good bite, so we figured we be good to sit out the front and the wind clocking around.
Sarah and Mickel on LoCo weighed anchor and set out for Nassau. At about 10:30 a trawler came in. We talked to them a bit on the radio and they circled us looking for some sand to anchor in. They ended up fairly close to us. They apologized on the radio and said they would have anchored farther away, but there was nowhere else that had protection from the west and sand for the anchor. They said they’d watch for a couple of hours and make sure it would be OK.
We took off in the dinghy to find the blue hole that’s supposed to be on the cay just to our north. (Cay is pronounced key and is an island.) We landed at the beach directly north of us hoping to find a trail through from there. There was none, so we got back in the dinghy to try to get around to the west side of the cay. But when we went though the cut and out into the water on the south side it was pretty wavy for our little dinghy. Since we didn’t know the depths and what the beach approach would be like, we gave up for today.
After lunch Bud went snorkeling. While he was in the water, LoCo came back along with another sailboat. I called out to LoCo and they said they’d just been beating back and forth; the wind hadn’t switched to the south much at all, so they decided to come back. LoCo anchored on the other side of the trawler, close to where they’d been the night before. The other boat anchored a ways over from the three of us, close behind another little cay. I went snorkeling after Bud got back and snorkeled over to the trawler. The trawler is Bodacious, from Bannock, MT and the couple on board is Jack and Jo.
We fed Fuzzy his supper and walked him. Then we went over and picked up Sarah and Mickel and went for cocktails on Bodacious. It’s a beautiful 39-foot Kady Krogan. We had a really nice time getting to know both couples. When we left to come back it was dark, we had no light with us and neither LoCo nor Earendil had an anchor light. After our eyes got used to the dark we could see OK. And Jack helped by using his spotlight to illuminate our way.
The wind has finally shifted to the west, but it has died down as it shifted, not gotten stronger as expected. It was blowing up around 20 knots today, but is probably between 10 and 15 knots now. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.