Road Town, Tortola to Water Point, Norman Island to The Bight, Norman Island
After a sweltering night, the grouchy captain and crew had cereal and coffee. This was our first encounter with our temperamental stove, which would frustrate us (just slightly) throughout the entire trip. We finished preparations by getting our floaties, picking out our snorkeling stuff, dinghying over to the bank to try to get the card (no luck yet), and repacking the refrigerator (note to self—pack all the meat in zip lock bags so that when they defrost all the meat juice doesn’t leak all over everything else in the top-loading refrigerator.)
At about 10am we were ready, and 2 Footloose staff came over to get us out of the slip (thank goodness for that). One woman drove us out of the slip then stepped off our boat as we passed close to the boat tied up at the fuel dock. An efficient and, hopefully, less damaging way of leaving the overcrowded marina.
And at last we were off.
It was still hot.
One early mistake was leaving up the peculiar dodger on our Beneteau 505. It had a tiny window in front that you could see out of only if you were sitting at the wheel. The tiny window had an even tinier opening window. And the dodger extended all the way to the bimini, so there was no way to be at the winches and have any idea what was going on with the sails. After we arrived at our first anchorage, we took the dodger down, and put it up only when we needed protection from the wind, such as when trying to eat in the cockpit while on a mooring.
I also had not studied the harbour plans sufficiently and we were a little intimidated by not having the usual chartplotter. We made it out of Road Harbour with no trouble, and maybe by the end of the week the lack of a chartplotter would feel less like trying to drive without a steering wheel.
We set sails as soon as we were out of the harbour, and Lydia was ready with the tilt-o-meter. Because Lydia is the least comfortable on the water, we are letting her decide when we need to flatten out the boat. This trip was a short (less than 1.5 hour) sail, so no one got seasick, and the tilt-o-meter only went off a few times and it was easy to fix (let the sails out some).
Our first stop was at the moorings under Water Point, just outside the Bight on Norman Island. The story is that Norman is the Treasure Island of Robert Louis Stevensons novel, and the Bight was the pirates cove. We picked up the mooring on the first pass and quickly jumped in to snorkel around the boat. It was great.
Lunch, then into the dinghy to check out Pirates Cove and the snorkeling at the west end of the bight. It was our first experience going from the water to land, and it made us very glad we were sailing instead of camping. We got drinks at the Cove while the kids prepared to snorkel. When they didn’t get in, and didn’t get in and didn’t get in, I walked down to hear them bleating about barracudas! I waded right in and swam off, thinking to show the kids that I wasn’t afraid. I saw him. I swam. I saw him behind me. I swam. I saw him AGAIN, about 5 feet behind me, stopping when I stopped, swimming when I swam. By then I was a little freaked out, so I just swam a wide circle around him back to the beach and climbed right on out and sat down in the shade and finished my dark n
‘n stormy.
When drinks were done we piled back into the dinghy, headed for the treasure caves around the point. We tied up to the dinghy mooring line (two small blue mooring balls linked by a line), jumped overboard with the float and split up into two groups. Ed had the kids and they saw a sea turtle. Lydia and Bob and I saw the caves up close and lots of fish and coral. It was fantastic.
But then we had to get back INTO the dinghy from the water. It wasn’t pretty. We all squirmed and kicked and got pulled and dropped into the bottom of the dinghy.
It was still hot.
Back at the boat, we found that a swarm of honeybees had moved on board. After a half hour of trying to scare them off, we gave up and moved our boat to a mooring in the windiest part of the bight’s mooring field. This worked great to keep the cabins ventilated and the bees away, but made it really hard to light the charcoal. We eventually gave up and cooked the shishkebobs in the skillet. It was hot, sweaty work.
When the sun shone in below the bimini, we hung our extra sheets up to provide a NC style shade for the boat. And when the sun went down, the sheets came in, not that it was ever cool enough to need a sheet or a blanket. It was another hot night, even with all of the fans blazing and the wind scoops set.
No comments:
Post a Comment