Friday, March 20, continued... In the afternoon, the kids from Tiki and Zimovia came over to play a game called Munchkin. After a while, they moved to Zimovia, which had a bigger table and better seating than Kosmos.
After they left, Eric, Christi and Clean Cup went snorkeling with another family in the anchorage called Sail La Vie. Christi and Eric had briefly met Sail La Vie one of the times we were in Big Major and they seemed like a nice family. We invited Clean Cup to join us since the Clean Cup kids were close in age to the Sail La Vie kids.
The motor had dried out and seemed to be working fine now, so Eric and Christi took their own dinghy — but warned the other two families that a motor failure was possible and to be prepared to rescue them. They left very early just in case there was an emergency. The motor seemed to work fine, which was a relief. Since they were so early, they waited on the sandbar in the middle of The Horseshoe for the other two families to arrive.
On Thursday, March 19, we pulled up anchor first thing in the morning. As had been forecast, it was raining with no wind. The lack of wind meant there was a lot of slack in the chain, so it was easy to get the snubber off and the anchor up, and we didn’t have to be out in the rain for long. Because there was no wind, we’d been doing circles around the anchor.
We left near high tide, on the rising tide. We were following the previous track that we’d taken in, so there wasn’t the anxiety going through the pass today that there had been on Monday when we weren’t 100% sure of the depths. Thanks to the lack of wind, it was a comfortable 2.5 hour ride to Warderick Wells Cay, though it did rain lightly the whole time.
The catamarans we were meeting had anchored in the same area that we’d anchored in at Christmas. The water in that anchorage was, for the most part, too shallow for us. Eric managed to thread through the narrow, slightly deeper channel to score the lone deep spot amongst them. We had to go out in the rain to anchor.
By the time Keith and Christi had finished schoolwork, the rain had stopped. Zimovia took all 9 kids (between the four boats) tubing. They ran two tubes at a time to maximize the number of kids being pulled per run.
Afterwards, the kids hung out of the beach for a little while.
On Tuesday, March 17, Christi woke up before dawn. She sat outside on the bow and stargazed for a few minutes. With no light pollution, the stars were luminous. Sitting there made her realize the sounds of the water in this spot were almost musical. The current hitting the boat sounded like gentle running water, and there was also the crashing of waves behind the barrier island. She wasn’t out there long before large, ominous clouds rolled in and blocked the view. We did have a little bit of color at dawn, but the dark clouds kept rolling in and blocked the sunrise.
As was forecast, it rained in hard in the morning, then slowed down to on-and-off rain for the rest of the day. Usually it was moderate showers, but a few hard showers did pass over us. We were happy about that since the boat really needed the wash down. The wind changed direction several times throughout the day, and we were glad we’d chosen an anchorage with the 360 protection as it was comfortable onboard despite the tumultuous winds.
Eric noticed an error message on dinghy motor’s display panel saying to recalibrate. He pushed the appropriate buttons and nothing happened. He unplugged battery and plugged it back in. Then when he pushed the buttons to recalibrate, it worked. He tested the motor. It worked. All seemed to be fine.
In the late afternoon, the boys from Clean Cup and Zimovia came over to play games. After they left, Eric looked at the dinghy motor panel again and saw it had the same error message. He figured he’d deal with it tomorrow.
It was still calm in the morning. We’d never put out the flopper stoppers, put on the window covers or got the dinghy down, so we had very little to do to get ready to go this morning. We pulled up anchor about 0630. It was a smooth passage to Blackpoint. We had a current with us and made amazing time, arriving at 1245.
Our friends on Algonquin and a Nordhavn 50 called Grey Goose were in the anchorage. Keith and Eric met them onshore. Christi stayed aboard to attend an online meeting.
They went to Lorraine’s on the road for lunch. Lorraine’s directed them to go to High Tide (the Lorraine’s on the waterfront) instead. After 30-minutes, the server still hadn’t taken their drink orders yet, so they left and went next door to the Yacht Club, instead. Eric had a nice time talking Nordhavns, but Keith was bored. After lunch, they headed back to Kosmos. Eric and Keith did stop by Lorraine’s mom’s for bread on both the way in and the way out, but she wasn’t home either time.
We’ll take a moment to share our opinions: we think the three restaurants in Blackpoint are all very comparable in terms of price, menu selection and quality of food. That said, we’ve decided that the Yacht Club was the overall best restaurant. We thought Lorraine’s had the best food, in part because she cooked the food to order, but the service was the slowest of the three, in part because she cooked food to order. Deshamon’s and Lorraine’s were inconsistent with hours. Emerald Sunset had stable hours and good service, but it was also the most expensive and the food was mediocre. The Yacht Club was reliable, with consistent hours, food, service and middle of the road prices. The biggest downside of the Yacht Club was that cats lived on the premises and sometimes the cat smell was quite strong — and for Christi, that was a big negative.
Christi hadn’t been on dry land since Wednesday and was anxious to go to shore. She and Eric headed to shore as soon as her meeting ended. Here were some of the birds watching them as they approached the dock.
