5th December

23 38 N
74 50 W

Weather: clear sky, cool, wind 5 to 10 knots gusting to 15, waves 2 to 4 foot.

20 AGONISINGLY LONG SLEEPS TO GO

We had a great night's sleep despite the music from the shore continuing well into the night, there was one particular singer that I didn't recognize but liked his voice and the song he was singing, wish I could have shazamed who he was!
Our morning was taken up with a quick trip to the town to collect the laundry that we left for a service wash, dry and fold yesterday, a trip to the supermarket to replenish our food stocks and the filling of the jerry can with diesel. The ride across to the town in the dinghy wasn't as rough as the previous day and we had gone early before the rush of dinghies for a place at the rickety dinghy dock. I had taken the camera with me and snapped a few photos of Gerry driving the dinghy under the narrow bridge at the entrance to the dock as it is hard to imagine unless you see it, so I will attach one for your viewing pleasure. There is a convenient seat outside of the supermarket where Gerry suggested I wait, with the jerry can and shopping bags whilst he went to fetch the laundry. It sounded like a good plan to me so I sat chatting to a nice local girl called Jade who was a bit hung over from the previous night's partying until Gerry reappeared, I was a bit concerned as there was no laundry bag to be seen until I realized he had detoured to the dinghy and left the laundry in it ready to go back to the boat. It was all good, Gerry then took the jerry can to fill whilst I went into the supermarket and began loading a trolley with the things that I thought we needed to replenish our stores. I was quite circumspect with what I bought as the prices are at a premium, however there were a couple of things that made it into the trolley which I hadn't seen in the USA - things from Europe that I just couldn't live without like tandoori paste - I feel an Indian meal in our future! Most of the shopping was salad ingredients, a fresh loaf of bread and a bag of the cat's favourite biscuits (couldn't forget the cat!), by now Gerry had reappeared, having put the jerry can into the dinghy, and preventing me from putting more than we could carry or afford into the trolley.
This small amount of shopping came to the princely sum of $90 odd dollars, not that there is any alternative unless you want to go without.
The ride back to our boat was a bit rougher as the waves were now coming across us rather than with us, I was bounced around all over the place as I get to ride on the middle seat whilst Gerry doesn't get so much motion as he is at the back in control of the outboard. I'm sure that I now have bruises on top of the ones I already owned! I got him to do a small detour so that I could take photos of Volleyball beach and our boat at anchor from a different perspective which I will try to load to the gallery once we have internet that I can utilize rather than the satellite phone connection that I use to upload the blog. Back on the boat we let the cat out of her prison, we had locked her down below to make sure that she didn't get too adventurous and fall in the water whilst we were gone, not that it was likely but you just never know with a cat! I unloaded and stashed away the groceries and laundry ( we appear to have everything we left there and no extra unidentified items of clothing so sorry Kay, no fancy dress photos), leaving Gerry to deal with emptying the diesel into the tanks and hauling the dinghy out of the water and securing it back on the davits. We downloaded the weather information and a couple of eBooks as we had an internet connection and then made the decision that we would leave at about midday and head further south whilst the weather was holding. For those that don't know, Georgetown has a reputation and is known as Chicken Harbour due to the fact that many sailors get to here and don't go any further due to concerns that the weather isn't quite as calm as they would like (nonexistent!) so they put off leaving and never get to go any further. We weren't going to fall into that trap!
At 11.30am we were ready to take off and had a moment of anxiety about hauling our anchor in as the wind shift had turned the large motor yacht next to us and it had to be just about over our anchor. With great caution I edged our boat closer to them with Gerry starting to bring the anchor up, at the last minute we got a reprieve with a wind gust blowing the motor yacht away from our bow so the anchor came up and I turned the boat towards our pathway out into the channel.
We motored slowly for about an hour until we had cleared the end of Georgetown and all of the small cays along the way, it then became a bit rough for a while as we turned the boat in the direction of Santa Maria where we might spend the night, or not! Even the chart plotter said that the waves at this point are breaking and it gets a bit rough due to the fetch coming into the shallows. The wind was as predicted, just off the nose, light with a few gusts up 18knots so the jib and stay sail went up which steadied the motion of the boat and we continued to motor sail towards Cape Santa Maria and as we were moving along at a steady 6.5 knots we turned the engine off and let the white flappy things do their stuff. Our average speed was down to 6 knots but a one point we saw 7.2 knots which wasn't bad for light conditions without the main sail up, we were happily sailing.
As we were cruising along with little happening we decided to put out the fishing rod for the third time this trip and try to catch an unsuspecting dinner dish. For those that know us well this will make you laugh as we are notoriously terrible at fishing, but we try, joking all the time about what we will do if we get a strike! Well it happened folks! At about 2.30pm the reel began singing out and we went into panic mode. Gerry reeled in the catch of the day, not such an easy task as we were not use to this rod and reel, having only used a Cuban reel previously (eternal thanks to Lyn and Pete for giving us one last time around). We also had a longer gaff this time which is more difficult to handle than the short one we had last time around. I took one really bad photo, not worth showing, as Gerry was reeling in. He landed it on the deck and we weren't sure what it was so I grabbed the cheat sheet to identify it and before I had the chance to snap another photo or identify it
from the chart, Gerry declared that we weren't eating a fish that we didn't immediately recognize (it wasn't Nemo or Dory) and released it back into the sea! Damn, there went dinner! After the moment I think what we had caught and released was a Bluefish which was perfectly good eating - oh well, good job we had Spaghetti bolognaise out of the freezer!
We made it to the Cape about 4pm and Gerry stowed away the fishing rod as we were navigating though the shallows at this point. We made the decision to not stop here and to continue on towards Rum Cay - why wouldn't you with a name like that? The extended trip would be another 25 NM meaning that yet again we would be arriving, negotiating the channel and anchoring in the dark, this is getting to be a habit! The decision to continue rather than stop was made as we wanted to make hay whilst the sun shone, well make the most of the weather that we had anyway. We ran the water maker, just because we could, replenishing the water tanks and proving that it all works whilst motoring along. Rounding the Cape we continued to sail for a while then as the sun began to dip the wind shifted and dropped so the engine went back on to maintain our speed. About an hour past the Cape we had the same problem as on the way into Georgetown, our wind and depth indicator repeater stopped working, getting stuck on the one reading. Luckily, we had the chart plotter readings to keep us going, this repeater problem is so random we aren't sure what's causing it, there will be an investigation as soon as we get to a spot where Gerry can tear it all apart and look at it. The waves had also dropped away so it was a good time to go below and prepare our dinner. As I had to boil water for pasta the stove gimbles were engaged, couldn't risk having boiling water toppling over if a wave hit broadside on. With the pasta cooked, the sauce already pre-prepared and defrosted it was simply a case of dishing it up and reheating it in the microwave a little later. As the sun was setting whilst I was down below I had to get Gerry to pick up the slack and take the sunset photos, unfortunately the sun was again setting behind the land of Santa Maria Cape, so there was no green flash to be seen.
Our running lights went on and we continued on our tack for another hour before having dinner in the cockpit by moonlight, at least there was a moon to see by this time!
Priss spent most of the day and evening with us out in the cockpit but vanished below for a couple of snoozes in her bed, she ate her dinner in the cockpit at the same time we had ours and seemed to almost inhale the teaspoon of wet food that we gave her. It seems that she has worked out that if she snuggles up close to the arm of my seat of power and glory (thanks to Bob McMullen for that term) I hold her in place and brace for the pair of us making her ride a bit more comfortable - she's one savvy cat!
The motor sailing continued until we reached the shallows at the entrance to Rum Cay where we furled away both of the sails and motored inside the reef towards the anchoring point.
There was a load of very bright, blue, green, red and white lights at one point which we couldn't make out what they were, they seemed to flash on and off in no particular sequence and weren't marked as anything on the chart. As we approached them, they were off to our port side, we got out the binoculars to discover that it was a large stink boat with lots of party lights, it was lit up like a Christmas tree so there was no way that you could miss seeing it. We motored past it to the anchoring spot, there didn't appear to be any other boats in the area so we picked our spot and dropped the anchor which grabbed easily. It was time to power everything off, have a cold drink and go to bed.