December 21-23

December 21

Still sitting in Allen's Cay. There's not much we can do with the winds so high... 25-30 knot and there are lots of boats coming in here to get out of it... even bigger than us!  A couple of huge cats... one from Australia and 2 from Canada ... the Aussies waved but the Canucks weren't so friendly. So we sit, swim and wait.  We didn't do too much swimming because the surge coming through was very strong.

December 22

We left Allen's Cay at 7:30 am and headed out... what were we thinking??? We got as far as Oyster Cay by 11:00 am and decided that we had been beaten up enough and went in. Oyster is the bottom of Highbourne Cay so we made, what... 5 miles??

 Around 3 pm the winds died a little so we decided to take off.  We  figured we could manage Shroud if the winds were down, but it's not the winds...it's the seas pushing us back. We made it as far as Shroud Cay and got there in the dark.  We passed two mega yachts anchored out. One had one of those coloured lights that change colour on the back. We couldn't tell if he was moving, swinging or what 'til we got close enough. Not nice!  We headed for shore until we hit 5 feet and dropped the anchor. Very rock and rolly, but we held well.

December 23

We decided that if we were going to be rocked like that we might as well try to make some headway, so we took off  at 7:00 am again. It was just too bumpy out there... winds gusting to 25 knots on the nose. We tried to put up the jib and tack but for every mile we made we lost it when we had to tack, so we thought we would go into Wardrick Wells.

The other deciding factor was ... I hit something and the prop stopped right in the middle of a tack. Rick didn't hear it because he was trying to tighten the jib sheet,  but I did and felt it. I dropped to neutral right away, and he looked under the boat to see what it was. There was a big piece of blue cloth wrapped around the prop. I put it in slow reverse and it let go a bit, then slow forward and it fell off, but it still didn't feel right. It turns out that we ran over our folding bucket and ate it. It was tied to the front stanchion [that's the steel frame at the front of the boat] but the wind picked it up at one point, ripped the handle off and threw it under the boat. We weren't sure what we had hit until later when Rick dove on it and saw that it was the remnants of the cloth bucket. He pulled out the bits left around the prop.

We got into Wardrick around 4 pm, threw down the anchor and ate spaghetti noodles again.

Wardrick was rocking and rolling as well. There was no place to get out of the swells and the wind was still up. There was no weather information from Wardrick and we couldn't get the internet...and yes I am in the middle of NOWHERE!