I was pretty excited for a while today because I thought I was going to be able to enter a new position for the blog. That didn't happen, and I'll get to that later, but we ended up having a pretty full day, for us.

It started out with a bad night for Fuzzy. he ended up sleeping out in the salon and spent a part of the night pacing. By 6 AM he was pretty agitated again. We gave him another half pill, then Bud took him to shore. It wasn't even full daylight yet. Fuzzy did need to go to the bathroom rather badly. When Bud got him back he started to settle down. We're not sure if it was the extra half pill or just that he was exhausted from his night of pacing, but he was more than calm.

The weather predicted fairly light wind for today and tomorrow. Bud thought we should take advantage of the light wind and lay in some more water. While we were at it we decided to get a load of wash done and buy some produce. The mail boat was in at Clarence Town late Thursday, so stores here got their supplies yesterday. After the cruiser's net here (where I did make an announcement about Mr. Pinder's vegetables) we got things together and went to Long Island Breeze. Most of the boats in the harbor had left and we were the only ones at the resort when we got there. Bud got two loads of water from Long Island Petroleum while I did the wash. Getting the water was a trip in itself. We took our 50 foot collapsible hose so we could hook up to their spigot inside their fence and fill the jugs outside the fence and save a lot of walking around. However, they now have the water working on the dock. Their dock was damaged in Hurricane Irene. The water works, the only problem is, most of the deck of the dock is still missing. If Bud couldn't manage to fill the jugs from the dinghy I'd have to balance on the side frame to walk out past the missing sections of dock. Bud brought the dinghy right under the dock. He could stand up and reach through the missing deck and hook our hose tot he spigot and operate the lever. 50 feet of collapsible, fabric hose was a bit hard to manage in the dinghy. Once he laid it out in circles around the dinghy so it wouldn't kink he managed to use it.

While the clothes were drying I tried calling our daughter on Skype. Happily, I got her, and with no one else using the Internet, Skype was working great. I finally had a nice long talk. How I've missed it! Bud came back and had a chance to talk to her, too. We ordered a pizza from Long Island Breeze for lunch and while that was getting ready I called my brother. Bud and I both got to talk to him, too. After lunch Bud went across the street for groceries and I called my Mom. What a treat. Bud came back because he'd left his wallet with me, so I went back to pay for the groceries and he called his Mom. For some reason he wasn't able to talk to her. Either other people (who had come in by then) were on the Internet, or her phone wasn't working or something. Anyway, it was after 1 PM by then, so we took our stuff and went back to the boat.

On the way back Bud suggested we weigh anchor and move 5 miles or so south to an area called Grey's Bight. There was supposed to be an OK anchorage there, and there is a blue hole that's about 35 feet deep in an area or water less than a meter deep. We wanted to take the dinghy and snorkel there. So we woke up Fuzzy (who was sleeping), took him ashore, got everything ready and took off. By then it was going on 2:30. Since it wasn't that far we put out the jib and sailed down. The wind was light but we were doing about 5.5 knots with just the jib. The last leg was due east, almost directly into the wind, so we took in the sail and motored in. The Chartbook advised "holding varies, look for patch of sand". So I had the anchor hanging off the bow roller ready to drop as we headed into the area. There was one trawler (we think it was Saranade, the boat belonging to the authors of the Explorer Chartbooks). There were also a few fishing boats up there. We didn't want to get too close to them, for one thing, it was likely to be too shallow for us up there. We looked for sand, but everywhere seemed to be the same, sand with rocks here and there. We tried a likely looking place and the anchor wouldn't set, so we hauled it up and tried again. We went a bit to port, I thought the sand looked better there, but again, once you got near it all looked the same, and again, the best looking spot we saw didn't have enough sand to hold. Bud wanted to try over towards a sand beach to starboard. I was concerned because I knew it got shallow there (actually, it got shallow a long ways from shore in every direction, the whole trip down we hadn't been in more than 12 feet of water). Anyway, we decided to give it one last try and if that didn't work we'd go back. We tried, Bud backed off and the anchor held, but he only pushed it to 2000 RPM in reverse, and he usually does more. Before we set the snubber we quickly got in the dinghy with the viewing bucket and went to check the anchor. The Rocna had tried. The tip was dug in about a foot, but it wasn't what I would call set. Bud asked if I just wanted to lay out a bunch more chain and call it good, since there wasn't supposed to be much wind tonight. I did not. I think we're a bit obsessive, but after going through a 50 knot storm last year when the forecast said there was "no energy" in the atmosphere, my policy is to be prepared for the worst. So we hauled the anchor back up and motored as fast as we could right back to where we were. We went 14.87 nautical miles and we think we're about 50 feet north of the spot we left.

Fuzzy was sleeping again, so we woke him up and fed him supper. By the time we took him to shore it was getting dark. We've been seeing crabs swimming in this water, some as large as about 6 inches across the body. We also saw a shark in about 2 feet of water swimming along the shore. It was probably a harmless nurse shark and it was under 3 feet, but it was still a shark. So it was with some care that I waded out pulling the dinghy to get to water deep enough to use the engine. I was up to about my knees when suddenly something bumped against my leg. I let out a yelp and did a little dance only to turn and see the paddle that Bud had prodded me with that he'd dropped in the water. Ha, ha, Bud. I guess it was an appropriate ending to a weird day.

I added photos to the other entries this morning. I know I took at least one picture today, but I can't remember what it was. Anyway, Long Island Breeze is closed tomorrow and Monday, so no photos until Tuesday. I just added this photo of the store with its Christmas decorations still up along the top of the overhang.