The 11:00 p.m. service at Mt. Olivet Baptist had very enthusiastic singing and an uplifting sermon. The congregation was very welcoming. All in all, a great Christmas Eve, although we did miss our friends and family at home.
Christmas day we headed back to the Wardwick Wells because a cold front with high winds was predicted. There was no room at the inn at the north mooring field, so we went to the south mooring field, through the very narrow, tricky, winding south entrance. The chart is noted as having strong currents. This was a bit of an understatement. The standing waves made me nervous. Usually Bill drives the boat through the tricky entrances as he enjoys this type of thing. For some reason I ended up bringing the boat into the harbor. This was a do it yourself heart stress test. Since I didn’t have a heart attack my cardiovascular health seems to be very good.
When we made our mooring reservation we were invited to the Christmas Day potluck at the ranger station on Wardwick Wells. At first we were not going to go because I did not have time to cook anything between our 2:00 arrival at the mooring and the 2:30 start of the potluck. Around 2:30 we decided to go late on the theory that all the food would be gone and we could visit with people guilt free. By the time we put the dinghy back in the water and dinghied the three miles to the north mooring field in our very slow dinghy it was well after 3:00 when we got to the party, where there was tons of food left over, so we had a nice meal. There were probably 50 or 60 people at the potluck, many we had not seen in quite some time. One man remembered meeting us five years ago at the Black Point laundry.
At sunset that night Bill spotted a ray swimming by the boat. A few minutes later we saw two large rays jump out of the water. These animals are big - it is quite impressive to see them launch their entire bodies four or five feet into the air. They land with a loud crash - I guess given their body shape belly flopping is their most likely landing option.
The weather reports were accurate for a change. The winds were out of the west to northwest for three days with wind speeds ranging from 20 to 30 knots, with higher gusts. We made a good choice on where to be, the mooring field was protected and mostly calm; about a 1 foot chop. This is probably why the pirate’s used this little harbor as an anchorage.
The first day we had a wet dinghy ride in to shore and went for a hike over to the other side of the island where big rollers were breaking on the beach. The second day was too windy to go ashore at all. By the middle of the day we were so bored we were fighting over doing the dishes, not about who had to do them, but who would get to do them.
Besides being bored we were also sleep deprived from the noise of the wind and the mooring ball smashing into the hull. No matter how many times Bill adjusted the halyards and the mooring pennant as soon as the wind direction changed slightly or the tide changed new or different things would rattle and bang. At night everything seems twice as loud and alarming as it does during the day. If you would like to know what it sounded like find a group of small children and a very large drum. First, provide the children with musical instruments, not the kind you buy, the kind you make. For example: a comb covered with tissue paper, a playing card clipped to bicycle spokes, some wire stapled to a board, a piece of chain link fence to rattle, a pencil to run up and down a spiral notebook - you get the idea. Second, give the children some candy bars and coffee. Third, climb inside the drum. This is what it sounds like: whir, moan, rattle, splash, creak, BANG, rattle, rattle, splash, creak, whir, BANG, moan, splash, splash, rattle, rattle, creak, BANG. The novelty soon wears off, but remember you are inside a drum and you cannot get out.
The third day the wind had calmed down a little bit so we decided to walk to the park headquarters to pay for the mooring. The distance from our mooring to the headquarters is about 3 miles as the crow flies. We are not crows. Most of the trails do not connect with each other, they end at beaches, so we had to cross the island, walk on a beach, find the next trail, follow it on a very winding course, then walk along the next beach, then repeat. The views are gorgeous, especially from the hills where every color of blue shows in the water and contrasts with the wide sand beaches.
One of the hardest parts about hiking is our inability to reliably identify young poisonwood trees. The older trees have scabby orange-brown sort of bark that is easy to spot, but the younger trees look suspiciously like the vast majority of the other trees to us. We usually sort the trees into very broad categories of “looks like a palm tree (probably safe to touch), poisonwood (don’t touch), might be a poisonwood (don’t touch).” This puts most of the trees into the don’t touch category, making walking through the denser areas tricky and leads to some strange looking body contortions of ducking and weaving between tree trunks and branches.
After our two hour hike we had a short picnic lunch before hiking back along the eastern side of the island. This trail is only a trail in the vaguest sense of the word. It is mostly just a hike along rocky outcroppings with the occasional cairn to reassure hikers that they are still following the coast in case the occasional drenching by salt spray was inconclusive. The first hour was fun, the last hour or so of the hike made us aware that our physical fitness plan of sitting around on the boat for days on end eating mostly carbs, then going for a four hour hike may have to be revised.
Finally a calm day! We decided to head down to Staniel Cay for the New Years festivities. We left the mooring field by the relatively wide and easy north entrance and headed down the coast. After being holed up because of the winds it seemed ungrateful to wish for wind again, but when we were trying to sail in 5 knots of wind we were tempted. We anchored just off Thunderball Grotto, so it was very easy to dinghy over to go snorkeling. We brought bread crumbs for the fish. As soon as Bill opened the bag hundreds of fish swarmed around him. I wish I had brought an underwater camera, all I could see were colorful fish and some swim flippers, they completely surrounded him. We swam through the tunnel of rock into the grotto surrounded by fish hoping for more treats. The top of the grotto has holes in it letting shafts of sunlight into the crystal clear water. It is like swimming in an aquarium overfilled with decorative fish.
We have had a great couple of days enjoying the many activities at the Yacht Club (pirate’s party, auction, complimentary cookout). Where we are anchored we had a good view of the racing for the local A-class sloops, LADY MURIEL and TIDA WAVE. Our friend Corning was lucky enough to be picked as crew for one of the races. We enjoyed hearing about his part of the winning team over dinner as we celebrated the new year. We even stayed up later than the cruiser midnight of 8:00. We stayed up until 9:00, on the theory that in much of the world it was 2011 already so we could go back to the boats in good conscience.
Happy New Year!
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