Friday, December 18, 2009
Another day in paradise! My cold has gotten worse and I feel the stuffed up nose and itchy throat and know that I won’t be doing any diving for a couple of days, but the winds are still pretty high so perhaps that is for the best as the visibility will be down.
I only half-finished the preparatory work yesterday and the boat is far from being ready to sail so I will have to spend a couple of hours this morning getting everything put back and stowed away in preparation for sailing somewhere. I haven’t decided where I wish to go yet. It will either be The Bight or perhaps Great Harbour on Jost Van Dyke; both are nice long downwind sails.
I just spent the last 2 hours being lazy and updating the diary/blog format to resemble a calendar. The sun hasn’t made an appearance yet so I am just going to remain here for a bit longer.
The sun never came out and fast moving low stratus moved through, so it was a good day to get things done outside on the boat; I got the whole rear transom cleaned up, removed the old paw prints from the Boo Tiger logo and used Awl Wash to clean up the very spotty transom area. It isn’t completely clean yet, but much better. I also did some cleaning/waxing of the white gel coat. Then I spent some time getting the big aft cabin area cleaned up and ready. The neat idea I had with using vacuumed bags to store the pillows, bedsheets and towels worked out OK, except the pillows now don’t seem to want to fluff up again. I am going to wash them anyway so hopefully the drier will expand them to their original size again.
At 22:30 I went above decks because something didn’t feel quite right and I noticed that the wind has shifted quite a bit and I was now very close to Prickly Pear island. I turned on the instruments and was dismayed to see that I only had 3 feet of water under the keel at the least and since the depth sounder is forward of the keel and my rudder was closer to the island and almost as deep as the keel I was running the risk of hitting bottom if the wind shifted any more. So I decided to weigh anchor but since it was dark and moonless I didn’t want to try anchoring again but opted to take one of the many free mooring balls around Saba Rock. I’ve gotten pretty good at doing this during the day, but doing it in the dark was a different proposition and it took me many attempts during the course of a half hour to snag one. But in the end I finally managed and certainly slept the more soundly for it. Looking at the angle that the other boats are at I think that was good choice, the wind seems to be shifted by a good 40°.