Saturday 1 Feb, BHS day 33: Back to Norman’s Cay, today’s objective is to upload videos, and be social while at it.
Anchored almost a mile west of Shroud Cay we are completely in the open with regards to shelter. The light south wind is creating quite a choppy sea. And it’s forecast to swing west and increase during the day. So after breakfast we have a lovely gentle sail downwind back to the shelter of Norman’s Cay, again zig-zagging through the cuts and shoals.
There are lots of yachts anchored in Norman’s and we manage to join the eastern end of the line, perfectly anchored in the middle of the channel. When I dive the anchor I marvel again at how Oana always seems to drop the anchor perfectly in the middle of the sandiest spot! Is it luck or just the skill of a woman’s touch? Whatever it is, anchor dropping is one of her many attributes of being a wonderful wife to me 🙂
After a coffee, we have a few hours polishing the videos ready for our trip ashore to upload them. Finally we get off the boat by 2pm and take a bumpy dinghy ride ashore armed with our PC.
At the Mac Duff’s bar, we join the others who are already there having lunch – Pete, Tracy, Stu, Ian and Michelle. It’s a nice social scene. A mixture of chatting, eating, drinking and everyone doing a bit of internet work in the background. And the WiFi is indeed brilliant. One video is uploaded almost too fast for Oana to keep up. We release the first video immediately then schedule the others for a few days time. If we release all at once, our viewers may be tempted to binge-watch. We can’t have that, can we? We don’t want to be treated like a Netflix series, thank you 🙂
The Mac Duff’s bar is quite surprising really. It’s very nicely done, yet it’s in the middle of this island where everything seems to be half constructed, yet to be finished. If Pete and Tracy hadn’t told us, we would never have dreamt that it even existed. That said, it is actually marked on Google Maps. What would we do without Google, eh?
The local staff are also very pleasant and they tell us about the Super-Ball buffet tomorrow, which we all gladly sign up for. I’m not particularly an American Football fan, but I just remembered that I also watched it last year, in St. Martin when Oana had gone back home for a few weeks.
On the way back to the boat we stop at Pearl for tea (as one does on a British boat!) and more chatting till dark, until we finally make our way back to Cloudy to get the anchor light on. Having uploaded all our hard work to YouTube we feel quite a sense of achievement. A bit like publishing a book after working so hard on it. Well, not quite the same scale but you know what I mean. And for the record, it’s all Oana’s hard work editing, not mine. For the rest of the evening we are motivated to finalize the next 2 videos and try to get those uploaded too. Then maybe we can actually keep on top of them, with no back log. Big maybe!
Meanwhile, outside, the wind is steadily increasing during the evening and the anchorage is starting to get a bit bouncy. Hopefully the wind will soon swing northwards as forecast, putting us more in the shelter of Norman’s Cay, ready for a nice sleep.
Today wasn’t our usual busy day. More of an admin day. But it has felt very relaxed and a nice change to socialize with such nice people.
