Sunday 2 Feb, BHS day 34, Norman’s Cay: Very windy night and morning, but we do venture ashore for the Super Bowl.
It was a rather disturbed night. The cold front arrived just as we were going to bed, along with thunder, lightening and rain. Then the wind swung north and steadily increased. So I slept in the saloon within earshot of the anchor alarm. We can’t drag more than 10m without going on the reef, plus the catamaran that was beside us is now directly upwind. Not that we could do much about it if he dragged. By day break the wind has peaked at 28 gusting 35kts and in the slack tide Cloudy is yawing all over the place.
During breakfast we can see across the anchorage that Ian and Michelle, on their yacht Mahina, have put up one of those special steadying sails (Dealtfin) on their stern, to stop the boat yawing. So when the wind drops a bit around midday I go over to see how it’s rigged and working.
Once on board I learn that during the night, there was a whole bunch of anchoring dramas over their side of the anchorage. A catamaran dragged anchor when their lazy jacks broke, spilling the mainsail all over the deck, which then got the wind into it and “sailed” them right through all the boats, finally coming to a stop just short of the Escobar plane wreck. And Pete rescued another boat that dragged passed him. Apparently he went over in the dinghy and knocked on their hull as they passed him, and the owners response was, “I can’t be dragging, the anchor alarm didn’t go off”. Meanwhile Ian and Michelle had their own dramas when their rudder started to touch bottom, but they couldn’t quickly move because some clown had anchored over their anchor. So they had to wake them up to move. Oooph, glad we were anchored at the quiet end of the line! For once!
Meanwhile, I’m quite impressed with Ian’s DeltaFin stabilization sail. It’s not a big thing. It’s actually 2 small sails joined at the luff each sheeting to one aft quarter. The luff is anchored to the deck centrally and hoisted on a spare halyard. Very simple, very effective. Like us, they have twin furled headsails which cause them to yaw all over the place when anchored in a wind. They also kindly show me around their boat. For 46ft it feels very big inside and out. And it’s well equipped, which is good because it will need to be when they cross the Atlantic to Europe this year.
After a full morning of editing videos Oana is now only a couple of behind where we are today. But on the other hand we are now over 400 clips for the Exumas alone; and we are not nearly done here yet! It’s just so photogenic, we can’t help ourselves. Every other word in the video is probably going to be on the lines of: beautiful, stunning, amazing, etc.
At 4pm we head ashore for the Super Bowl party at MacDuff’s bar. Properly geared with windproofs. “Super wet for super bowl” we joke about the dinghy trip, as it is a wet ride. We are the first group to arrive so we all get our WiFi “work” done before everybody else arrives and the buffet starts. We manage to upload two more videos and schedule them to be released each Friday. There, that should keep our small but very friendly set of fans happy with no more “where are the videos?” messages 🙂
At only $40 per head, MacDuff’s put on a decent buffet spread. By 5pm the place fills up and we enjoy a really nice evening eating, drinking, chatting and half watching the game. The best bit in our view (not being huge US football fans) was the halftime entertainment. It’s quite a spectacle. And all in the Miami arena we were at just a few weeks ago.
Mid evening we are back at the boat. The wind has calmed down and the stars are out. After last nights disturbed sleep, we are in bed early for once and asleep like babies. It was a lovely evening. Oana and I love each other’s company, but it’s so nice to be out with friends for a change.
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