February 12 to February 17, 2017

Sunday, February 12^th, we left Blackpoint and planned on stopping at Pipe Creek.  The sailing was perfect so we could not bear to stop sailing.

We continued to on to Warderick Wells and had a wonderful surprise – our friends on SANDFLEA were anchored near Emerald Rock.  We have missed Ben, Tambi, and Molly so this was a great treat.  We had a nice visit with them and they came over to CORRET for dinner. Unfortunately the dinner was cut short by a rain shower and they had to hurry back to their boat to close hatches.  The word for the night was “clear”.  After the brief rainshower the skies cleared, the full moon shone through the clear water, and the shadows of the boat and passing fish showed clearly against the white sand bottom.

Monday was an amazing snorkeling day. Bill and I started by drift snorkeling at Warderick Wells by the park headquarters, then we dove on a couple of shallow coral heads filled with fish. We then motored down to O’Brien’s Cay and snorkeled over the plane reef. This area was even better than the morning’s snorkeling. The SANDFLEAS joined us and  we went to the Sea Aquarium which was even better.  There were hundreds of decorative fish and a wide variety of coral in easy snorkeling depth. In the evening we went to SANDFLEA for dinner.

Valentine’s Day started off with another fantastic snorkeling experience. We met Ben, Tambi, and Molly at Rocky Dundas and snorkeled over the beautiful coral then swam into the very impressive caves.  The first cave was great, then the second one was even better.  Each of the caves has a hole in the top of the cave so there is plenty of light to see the fish and the stalactites and stalagmites.

After snorkeling we went to Staniel Cay to fill up the gas cans for the dinghy.  We have been putting some miles on the dinghy going to snorkeling sites.  We were hoping for groceries but the mailboat did not come in last week so the only meat available was hotdogs.  We went back to Cambridge Cay for the night. Our timing was impeccable, we anchored just in time to join the sunset potluck on the sandspit in the middle of the harbor.

Wednesday the wind was up but we went back to the Sea Aquarium to do some snorkeling.  We swam for about half an hour but the waves and current were a challenge so we called it quits for the day.  We anchored in the Bell Island anchorage to sit out the next cold front.  Thursday we spent the whole day on the boat except for a quick visit to SANDFLEA in the afternoon. When we returned to CORRET we took the outboard off the dinghy but decided to leave the dinghy in the water so we could open the forward hatch at night.

Friday morning we had the radio on by 6:30 as we were expecting a radio call from NEVERLAND and DAGNY about weather and timing for crossing over to Eleuthera.  It is lucky we had the radio on earlier than normal (we usually do not turn it on until around 8:00 a.m.).  We heard a call from the boat SIRIUS saying that they had an emergency. Their dinghy had drifted away during the night. Fortunately they could see it washed up on shore.  Because our dinghy was still in the water it was only a few minutes work to put the outboard back on and Bill went to the rescue.  

The weather report called for light and variable winds under 10 knots so we left for Eleuthera with DAGNY. NEVERLAND had electrical problems and decided to wait a day before crossing.  The wind turned out to be 10-15 on the nose for most of the day.  NEVERLAND crossed the next day and had a great beam reach.  Timing is everything.