It's been a couple of weeks since I posted here in spite of all my good intentions.
Part of the problem is that Weebly, for all their great and simple site construction features, can't be worked on off line. So I can't type up blog entries here on the boat and then log on later when I've got internet coverage and hit "Publish Live". Very frustrating.
So much has happened it's hard to know where to start. I may well enter current posts now and catch up ones later, when we have more time.... in about 10 years!
Since the last entry we came down to the Cayman Islands to look at a big, heavy cruising ketch. It had 2 things going for it.
Firstly the couple who owned it have been living on her and cruising for the last 2-3 years, so we knew she was capable, equipped and actively doing what we want to do.
Secondly she is a CT 54, one of the most good looking sailing boats to come off a drawing board.
I guess we were expecting quite a few things to be better, but in the end we decided to go with inconvenience in a lot of areas because we bought her for quite a reasonable price. We certainly never 'stole' her, but over time with the upgrades we have in mindshe will be quite a special boat, and hopefully worth a bit more than we will have put into her. This of course is every boat owner’s fantasy. Only time will tell.
So far we have aches and bruises in places we didn’t even know we had body.
The first few days and nights were spent on a very uncomfortable mooring off George Town. It was so rough at times we had food flying across the galley to the delightful, lilting refrains of Sandy letting loose. It didn’t take her long to pick up sailors’ language!!!
Climbing aboard from the dinghy was an exercise in timing and coordination that would have got us into Cirque de Soleil for sure.
After a few days we’d had enough and fired up the engine to move in carefully through the coral to a mooring closer to the shore where we hoped to have a little less rock n’ roll.
It was only marginally better, so a couple of days later we decided to take the bull by the horns and move the boat around to North Sound. It’s open sea to the top of the island and then a tricky trip through the entrance which is narrow and shallow. There are reefs all over the place, and once in the sound there are a lot of places that are way too shallow for us. But the big plus was that we would be sheltered from the continuous rolling swell.
Also, we have seen little in the way of boats and marinas. From what we heard the sound is where it all happens.
We took a couple of hours to work out the chart plotter a bit more and set waypoints that would keep us out of trouble if we hit each one, and of course if the gps charts are accurate.
What can I say? It went like clockwork. We picked our way out through the coral, past Jolly Roger, the quaint little pirate ship that does tourist trips... actually it looks to be about the same size a Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hind. How ships have changed.
Once clear we used the autopilot right around the top of the island and I only took the helm again for the actual entrance. That part was hairy because it involved zig sagging a bit. Sandy was watching the plotter to make sure we hit the closely bunched waypoints, and in between out on the bowsprit watching depth.
We watched in horror a few times as the depth sounder dropped below the point where we should have been touching bottom, even though the charts were showing just enough water.
The bottom of the sound is turtle grass so for a while we thought we may have been sliding on it. But it happened a few times too many.
This was not the best way to find that your depth sounder is probably calibrated to give the depth of water under the keel, and not the actual depth of water from surface to ground as reflected on charts.
So, the dry mouth, porcupine neck moments eased and we made our way deeper into the sound, and relative calm.
We have been so much more comfortable here, but this is certainly not the ‘happening’ part of the island. There is only one other cruising yacht around and that is Orion, with 3 English guys who have stopped for a bit of diving before heading to Rio Dulce in Guatemala. It’s a well known hurricane hole and they’re going there to sit out the hurricane season. It’s a destination we’ve considered too, but getting back out of there is a slog to get down to Panama. Fine if you’re heading north to Cuba or the US.
I’m sticking with my idea of doing bite sized posts here, so this is it for now.
Until next time...