Saturday, February 26, 2011
I woke up at sunrise and proceeded to work on the previous day’s blog, then tried to get myself motivated to do some inventory work, but I really couldn’t get the energy together to do it. The wind was still strong and I could see the whitecaps outside the Bight and decided to wait a bit before continuing on to another, potentially less comfortable, anchorage. The WindGuru forecast wasn’t promising and somewhere around 10am I decided that I really didn’t want to risk getting an uncomfortable mooring at Cooper’s Island so I opted to stay in the same place for one more day and evening. I went ashore to drop off garbage and get some minimal provisions, which consisted of a six-pack of Samuel Adams beer and some other stuff which I cannot seem to remember right now… On the way back I stopped at a very sleek and elegant yacht that I’d been looking at the day before and inquired what make it was, and wasn’t too surprised to hear that it was a new Swan (I didn’t ask how big, but it must be somewhere between 55 and 65 feet) and spoke for bit with the owner and captain. Towards the end of the conversation I mention the gray AwlGrip job and they did state that their biggest fear was docking and errant boats getting too close to them. Several hours later I went topsides and saw the yacht closely coupled with a large Moorings charter catamaran and jumped into the dinghy to see if there was anything I could do to assist, as I got hit with a pang of conscience with the thought that perhaps I’d “jinxed” them by my talk earlier. As I arrived they cast off and I asked the people aboard the catamaran if I could assist; but they declined with just a mention that the Swan had left their docking line attached to their mooring; so I picked that up and returned it to its rightful owner and luckily the people aboard didn’t bear me any bad will for their mishaps and stated that it seemed that the catamaran had just hit their anchor and that they’d seen the impending disaster in time and gotten fenders deployed. I worked on cleaning up the deck and using the Prism Polish to get rid of the rust stains on the stanchions and hopefully setting up a protective layer to prevent future rusting for a bit. After doing my obligatory duty on the boat for about two hours and managing to lose an important bolt for one of the lifeline gates (I’ll have to go shopping at Nanny Cay on Monday morning) I settled back for happy hour and to watch the late arrivals racing across the anchorage at high speed to find nonexistent free mooring balls. Today no dinghies or boats hit the reef but I feel it wasn’t for lack of effort. I went to the Last Resort restaurant on Bellamy Cay for dinner and met a couple of private jet pilots and we spent some time with their iPhone dredging up amazing fact about the Airbus A380 (fuel capacity, costs, etc.) that a private Sheik had ordered and discussed the case of the Gimli Glider, an Air Canada 767 that ran out of fuel in the air and ended up landing dead-stick on an abandoned airfield (being used by some surprised racers); the pilot was also a glider pilot.
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