After two full days of high winds and rain squalls, we woke to the blissful sound of silence in the harbor. For a moment I thought I’d simply gone deaf, but the lack of air flow through the hatch reminded me that the front had in fact passed. Naturally we then opted to swap that silence for the hum of the engine, taking advantage of the one window of time we’ll have to make our jump further south. If we sit, we wait another week or so, and while we love Hope Town, the draw of the Exumas is much greater.
So now I sit in the cockpit watching the sun come up over Elbow Cay as Andy bustles around on deck setting up the preventers (we’re predicted to have winds behind us as we head across from Little Harbor to Eleuthera). A few hours on the ‘inside’ (in the Sea of Abaco), and perhaps eight or nine for the crossing. We may try a little fishing, and we’ll definitely do a lot of eating, reading, and possibly napping. (It shouldn’t be a real mystery as to why I love being offshore so much.)
The irony of my excitement for those activities is great- we have actually been sitting on the boat for the past 48 hours, with the exception of one short walk ashore (had to see if the legs still worked), doing just those things. I read, wrote, napped, cooked, tidied, we played cards, watch some shows, I plowed my way through some procrastinated bookkeeping, and Andy spliced a new line for our main sheet. When on the first day Andy got a bit antsy to brave the spray and leave the boat, Violet and I calmed him with blank faces and slow “Huh?”s. We stayed put.
Day two brought little respite of the wind, and in fact more rain, but we finally caved and had a slow and exhausting walk ashore. Turns out our legs DID work, but we didn’t really want to support them in that option. Back to our nests we went.
Fingers crossed for a mahi today. THAT’LL make the nest complete.
