As I’d been forced to anchor relatively far outside due to my late arrival with all the mooring balls occupied, I did roll around a bit at night when the wind faded away and left the boat to drift broadside to the waves washing around the anchorage headland. Although I didn’t sleep too well, I still got enough sleep to let me attack the new day. I had some coffee and granola bars for breakfast and then assembled the dive gear for what has always been an excellent dive site at Île Fourchue.
The winds were calm when I dinghied over to the solitary mooring marking the site and descended to find that the site was still a wonderful one. I could tell that the seas were kicking up and disturbing the bottom, plus the swell was noticeable at depth and a good current was running as well so this would be my last dive for a couple of days since with seas peaking at over 4 meters the visibility would go down from many meters to a few centimeters.
I tried to shoot some video with my camera, but I’d forgotten that it doesn’t auto focus during video and unfortunately the long video where I followed a lobster crawling across the bottom for several minutes and another where I followed a turtle around were shot out of focus and are basically useless. Nonetheless I enjoyed the dive immensely and came up after 40 minutes with half a tank; so I know I’m getting back into dive mode and doing better with my air. I’d switched the new dive computer from metric to imperial measures and saw the types of numbers that I was used to – feet instead of meters for depth.
After getting back aboard I saw that an inner mooring had become free and prepared to get the anchor up and snag the mooring. By the time I’d done this a catamaran had arrived and, of course, it took the good mooring. I’d already weighed anchor and chose another mooring that I didn’t really like since it was very close to shore and perhaps with back winding my big boat would be in risk of grounding and as I was motoring past a moored boat the skipper came out and told me that he was leaving, so I managed to get a very good position for the next overnight stay – closer to shore and out of the direct path of any NW swell coming around the bend.
I then went to work on the stainless in the forward part of the boat, and managed to acquire my first sunburn of the trip as I’d neglected to put sunblock on my back but I hope that this burn won’t be a bad one since I’ve already got some pigmentation; I’ll find out tonight or tomorrow. At this point in time it was mid-afternoon and I was surprised to see Welwyn and Friedemann arrive in their replacement charter boat, the “Petole” and due to the shifting winds they had to make 2 attempts to anchor but finally found a comfortable spot close in that should give as much protection as possible from the soon-to-arrive swell. I’d tried to go ashore in the dinghy a bit earlier and the surf was already a bit much for me and the waves hitting the rocky cliffs at Île Fourchue were already noticeably higher.
By now other boats were arriving and anchoring, including the kindly skipper who’d relinquished his spot to me earlier. He took a mooring ball close in, but soon motored past and said it was uncomfortably close to shore there and he might motor to St. Martin or St. Barths for the night in order to find shelter from the north swell.
Welwyn and Friedemann invited me over for an early dinner aboard the “Petole” and we had sun-downers while watching the large red sun sink into the sea. Dinner was a tasty pasta dish and I thought I’d stayed quite late but when I returned to Zanshin I found it was only 21:00 so I watched an episode of “The thin blue line” that Sally and Chris had given me before falling asleep.
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