sailing

As I write this Bob is ashore doing our laundry…..yes, it’s almost unbelievable, but I promise….it’s true.  How lucky is that?  We are in Black Point Settlement on Great Guana, where you can get a haircut and do your laundry and have conch fritters, all at the same place that overlooks the little bay where all the boats are anchored. I am suffering from a cold, the last person onboard to get it….just when I thought I had missed the nasty little germ.  So I get to stay aboard and take a nap. Oh well.

This is where you sit to get your haircut while your laundry is going inside

After Chris left last week we had big plans to sail up to Compass Cay and spend a day or two shelling.  On the morning we wanted to depart our anchor would not come up. While we were wondering what was wrong a large power boat arrived and anchored right next to us…..very close, which worried me because I had a bad feeling we’d get tangled with them undoing our anchor problems.  The short version is that after trying to get the anchor up from different angles, Bob put on his shortie suit and free dived down about 25 feet to take a look.  I have to add that he was in the throes of his own cold then so I know this was not his first choice of how to remedy our situation.  He discovered that the anchor was caught on a limestone ledge.  A second dive allowed him to tie a rope around the anchor (he was intending to pull it out by tying the rope to the dinghy and driving forward), but then, while he was down there, he thought he might as well see if he could just free it  by lifting it with his hands.  That worked….so when he hit the surface he let me know that the anchor was free.

In the fast moving currents, it didn’t take long for us to start skimming our way over to that big powerboat.  So there you go!  I was onboard alone at the wheel, Bob was in the water quickly getting left behind as he struggled into the dinghy and got the dinghy anchor up.  I’m headed toward a 70-foot luxurious powerboat, and I’m dragging along a 65 lb.  Bruce anchor as I go.  Well, it was a lot of excitement, and I’m happy to report that there was no loss of life, or any other irreparable damage.  Whew!

But all the yanking on the Bruce anchor before Bob went down to look a look, did cause some damage…. that long shank on the anchor used to be straight!

So instead of heading out, we motored a short distance to some nearby moorings and picked up one.  Then Bob spent a couple of hours undoing our damaged Bruce and replacing it with a gargantuan Fortress that we keep onboard as a spare.  By the end of that, with his cold raging, he was too tired to think of going anywhere….and that was fine with me too.  I can only handle so much excitement in one day.

So, when we did finally tear ourselves away from Staniel Cay, we headed south to an idyllic spot that doesn’t seem to attract many visitors.  Lucky us!  We were the only boat at Bitter Guana, and it is quite a spot.  I hope it continues to be unpopular!  We were alone with a stunning white beach, a large limestone outcropping, and about 16 wild iguanas.  The winds have been pretty calm, after a week or so of too much!

Speaking of wind: I have a love/hate relationship with it.  Yes, a good breeze is just what you need when the temps get in the upper 80s F…. but far too often it just blows too hard down here.  At anchor the boats roll from side to side and buck up and down (at the same time) and it’s about as challenging as being underway in rough conditions.  It’s no fun.  And the sound…. There comes a point when I’d give anything to turn down the volume.  I just want some quiet.  So wind is often the thing that is most challenging.  Anyway…..just had to whine a bit about wind.

We’ve done a little shell collecting and illegal iguana feeding, and I’ve been suffering through my cold.  Last night’s sunset gave us another green flash!  That makes four so far!  Last year we only saw it once!

 Here’s what you miss when you sleep in due to being in a Nyquil-induced fog.  It turns out there are lots of tropical long tails nesting on Bitter Guana along with the iguanas!  They fly out in formation first thing in the morning and return at dusk.  Sorry I slept in….

 And about my projects:  things are not as good as I’d first thought.  In fact, I’m wondering if I am going to end up starting every single one of them over.  I guess that’s a bit of an exaggeration.  I do have the one Oktoberfest sock.  And I have these two newly finished embroidery projects.  They hardly count though, because each one only needed a few areas of work to be finished.  I think both these little cross stitch projects have been languishing in a bag for about a decade …. And now they are finished!

I am on the fence about the tapestry.  It has too much black space, meaning the space between the spools.  That might work out for being at the top of the piece, but it seems to me that the spools on the bottom of a shelf are the ones that are the most crowded and perhaps even squashed into less round shapes.  They are bearing the weight of all the other spools. I realize I could turn the piece upside down when it’s finished, but I’m also not happy with my first two spool colors, which are in the lower left so they would be upper right if I turned it upside down.  I love to blend colors on the bobbin, but now that I’ve done a bit of work on this piece, I think what’s called for is unabashedly blazen, full saturation color.  It’s a very graphic piece, lots of circles and circles within circles, and I think the shapes are quite happy shapes….so it needs happy colors.  I’m not crestfallen about undoing the weaving….I’m just sad that there is so little time when the waters are calm enough to work. It’s a shame to spend a perfect, calm day un-weaving rather than weaving.  Oh well.

When all else fails, I bake!