Our days in Georgetown were as lovely as they could have been, perhaps save for the sad part of saying goodbye to one of our boat buddies. We adults had a final night of good cheer and good food aboard Valinor, while the kids dinghied in to the beach to spell ‘Rickanor’ in rocks on the sand flats- the trifecta has memorialized its name, and we are so grateful to have had each other as wonderful boating companions for this past month. Until we meet again!
They headed out to Conception (I’ll have to live vicariously through them), and we took advantage of the same weather to shoot north. Andy woke one morning recently to take stock of the days we have left before we haul in Green Turtle, and once he reconciled that with the weather forecasts we have, his mood turned to anxiety. We’re in race mode now! (Well, sort of..)
We had a nice sail north to Leaf Cay, an ‘anchorage’ that we remembered loving when we were there two years ago, but this time around it was less than.. grassy bottom (harder to set the anchor), and a lot of current, which would have made our kids boat/raft play more nerve-racking to behold. We instead shot down to Lee Stocking Island, where the kids happily played in the water while Andy, Dan and Susanne went ashore to check out the abandoned research station. (The Perry Institute for Marine Science’s coral research funding dried up about ten years ago, and from their accounts, it’s basically as if people just packed their clothes and walked off the dock. All else is still intact, save for whatever looters have likely helped themselves to in these years. Eerie, and as one Navionics note says “kind of Walking Dead”.) Meanwhile, I stayed aboard to weep into the last pages of the book I was reading, and to make sure the kids kept the water out of their lungs.
Yesterday was Chickadee’s most amazing day of sailing on record. We made excellent speeds on a very comfortable broad reach, with a few minor surfing episodes thrown in for good measure, always my favorite. We ran from Lee Stocking up to Staniel, and made it in time to drop the anchor and reconnect with two other boats on our oft-haunt Pirate Trap beach. The kids recreated the Rickadee Cafe once more, and we ‘enjoyed’ nice meals and their adorable service, with questionable comfort in seating. (I also almost swigged salt water from a bottle that they served my ‘ginger ale’ in, which goes to show: do not put a bottle in front of me that I shouldn’t drink. My habits apparently die hard.)
Gone are our stints of short travel days, and after today’s day of Staniel Cay leisure, we will make as much northward progress as possible, and fast. Sunday is forecasting a stretch of high winds and ever-growing seas for a number of days, so we’ll tuck into where we land for a bit, and hope we enjoy our surroundings!
