Bud wanted to try fishing again today, so I thought I'd do some hiking again. Stocking Island, which forms the eastern boundary of Elizabeth Harbour has quite a few very nice hiking trails. I hadn't been on the ones taking you to the north end of the island, so I thought I'd do that. We closed the boat up some, but the chance of squalls was slim today, so we didn't close it up tight. Fuzzy was staying aboard.

We still have only one hand held radio (since we seem to do these solo activities we really should have two) so we just set a time limit. We left the boat at about 10:15 and agreed to meet back on the beach at 1:30. I told Bud if I got back early I'd try to walk up to the beach closest to the boat, otherwise he'd find me at the beach with the dock as that had the trailheads for the northern trails.

I took a really nice trail over to the Atlantic side of the island (I guess technically this is the southern end of Exuma Sound, but since we're south of both Eleuthera and Cat Islands, there's really not much out there between us and the Atlantic). When I got there, this is the weather I saw. Since the wind was more or less in my face, that was the weather that was coming. It might go north or south of us a bit, or it might dissipate before it reached us. I kept walking. It was very comfortable and I had the whole beach to myself. I put two more pictures of the beaches in the album. By the way, there is no plastic trash on these beaches. There are so many cruisers that use Elizabeth Harbour that they police the beaches. You'll find some piles of bottles at the edges of the beaches, but periodically it all gets carted off.

It was a lovely walk. Just as I was getting nicely into the northern part, the weather hit. I was wearing my swimsuit with a shirt over it. That was probably good because I was soon soaked to my skin. I decided that Bud was probably not fishing in this, so I turned back. I took a different trail back to the harbor side of the island and then started down the beaches on that side. The rain let up as I approached the beach with the docks. I didn't see our dinghy anywhere, and thought perhaps Bud had decided to go back out. I was just debating taking off again on another trail when I saw Bud in the dinghy heading my way.

He'd been back to the boat. In the worst of the rain he couldn't see as far as the beach with the dock, so he put out a call on the radio to see if anyone in the anchorage saw me walking. They did, so he came out to get me. Unfortunately, as we were cruising back to the boat, the outboard quit. Bud restarted it a couple of times and each time it quit again. We were only about 100 yards from the boat, so we started paddling. Unfortunately, although the rain had quit, the wind hadn't, and it was pushing us behind the boat. We were paddling like mad and making very little progress. Bud kept yelling at me to paddle harder, but it was very tough going. A man in a dinghy came by and offered us a tow and Bud turned him down! We were very close to the boat by then, but the wind seemed to be getting stronger and our progress was slowing. Fortunately the man hung around a bit and when he saw our poor progress came back. This time we took the tow for the last 50 feet or so.

Once we were back aboard the sun came out and the wind dropped down. After lunch Bud went out to check the outboard engine. After a couple of starts and stops it started and ran fine. We put some gas treatment in it and Bud took it for a few circles upwind of the boat. It seems okay again so it must have been a piece of dirt or bit of water that got in the gas tank when Bud filled it.

Later in the day Bud thought about going back out fishing. I was considering hiking again, too, but the camera was wet, so I was trying to let that dry out. While we were thinking about it another huge row of clouds came up. We decided not to chance it. It rained a bit, not much. I told Bud if we'd gone out again it would surely have poured again.