The wind was down today so we set off to visit Staniel Cay. We were going twice, first to buy 15 gallons of diesel and check out the place. Then we wanted to come back and buy another 15 gallons (we have three 5-gallon jerry cans) and use the Internet. Bud emptied the diesel we had in the three cans into one of our tanks.

The first trip went fine. It's a bit over a mile to the gas dock at Staniel Cay Yacht Club where they took our diesel cans to fill. We beached the dinghy at a little enclosed beach right at the club that's set up for dinghies. We had read that the clinic on the island could use donations of bandages, so we gathered what we thought we could spare from our first aid kit. We walked over to the clinic, but no one was there.

We kept walking to see how far it was to Isles General Store and to make sure they could fill propane tanks. After cooking pretty much every day since last October, one of our 20 lb. propane tanks finally ran out about two days ago. We also wanted to see if you could get there by dinghy, or if we should walk from the yacht club. We found out they could fill the tank, when they had gas, but right now they didn't have any. They expected to get more on the next mail boat which they thought would be there tomorrow, but we should call (on the VHF radio) first. We also saw that we could get our dingy up the creek to the store and they had a pretty decent dock, so that's the way to go.

We walked back to the yacht club (really a marina) and stopped back at the clinic. Again, no one was there. So we left our bag of bandages and tape hanging on the front doorknob. Hopefully they'll be found and will be useful. The picture is of us entering the Staniel Cay Yacht Club from the roadside, with beautiful bougainvillea bushes lining the way. Notice all the golf carts. Most of the vehicles on the island are golf carts. We saw a few pick-up trucks and one van.

We took the dinghy back out to the fuel dock and they handed our jerry cans down to us. It was a bit of a rough trip back, with all the extra weight, but we made it. Bud put that fuel into one of our tanks.

We debated making a second trip, but they did have Internet and I really wanted to get online. At noon, when we thought the breeze had died down, we loaded the now empty jerry cans back up, packed the computer in it's case and then in a rubber lined canvas bag and took off. We put the computer bag upright, under the seat in the center of the boat. We went quite slowly the whole mile over, trying not to get it wet. Fuzzy and I got pretty wet, but the computer stayed dry. We stayed quite a while, I was online, Bud filled the jerry cans and loaded them back in the dinghy. By the time we were ready to head back to the boat the breeze had completely died and the water was smooth, so we had a quick and easy trip back to the boat.