Friday, December 25, 2015

Hawksbill Cay

Monday, December 21, 2015
One of the beaches in Hawksbill Cay
Our anchorage
 Check out this sailboat!  He is so tall he has to have specific lights on
at night so he can be seen by planes, etc....
 

Our sunset!
 
Hawksbill Cay originally called Shroud Cay, is one of the most beautiful cays in the park, if not the entire Exumas.  Uninhabited, it has several beaches on both the banks and Exuma Sound sides. 
We decided to leave and was headed for Warderick Wells Cay but we didn’t quite make it.  When we first left it was really nice.  We ran with our jib only, at 6.5 knots, with no engines for about 30 minutes and then we made the dastardly turn left!...then everything went to heck!  The water was a churning! So we decided to go to Hawks Bill Cay.  It was only a 6 mile run so it didn’t take us too long to get there. In fact, we dropped anchor at 11:40 in the morning! 
With the water being as rough as it was we decided to just stay on the boat.  There was a nice coral head not too far from where we were anchored but the current was pretty strong and I just didn’t feel like dealing with it.  So I took a nap instead J !!
Bob and I worked on our rain catcher today.  He came up with a great idea.  I purchased the tarp to catch the rain a year or so ago, so all I have to do is fit it and put some grommets in it.  Bob put together a bilge pump (brand new) with a hose attached to it to go into the water tank. Then we are going to put a 15 lb weight in the middle of the rain catcher to hold it down so it won’t blow all over the place during the rain storm.  He then attached the bilge pump wiring to the seawater hose for power, now all we have to do is turn it off and on from inside the boat and not have to go out in the rain.  He’s a genius! He says this is what he does when he gets up in the middle of the night, “think about stuff like this….”
Then we did some mock scenarios, such as, “man overboard” and how we would handle such things.  It’s just like a training class, doesn’t hurt to practice it.  In fact, I think we are actually going to do it in the water just to see if what we think is the right answer.  It’s always better when you actually do it.  Of course, it will be a nice calm day when we do it, but at least we know what to expect.
He’s also decided I need some more hands on training with planning a route and actually getting us there.  So he is going to show me how to put way points in, look at the chart and compare it to the Chart Plotter, and then I will be captain for a day…the day happens to be from Staniel Cay to Georgetown!  I’m ready!
Tomorrow we are hoping to move on to Warderick Wells Cay.  We will see.  I need phone and internet service bad!


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