Wind and Rain

Wind and Rain

Friday 8th - Saturday 9th Dec 2023

On Friday morning we took the dinghy into Jolly Harbor (Inner harbor) and tied up at the government dock. We cleared in at Health, Customs, Immigration and Port Authority; separate departments, each occupying their own office and requiring their own paperwork, but all coordinated on the veranda of the building. It took about 90 minutes, and to be fair, all of the officials were friendly and welcoming. There were no problems getting cleared in until 9th January.

We were feeling sort of lazy, so we returned to Cotinga and had a relatively quiet afternoon hanging out on board. We did a small load of laundry, washing and rinsing in a 3 gallon bucket, and then strung it all up on lines in the cockpit. This was the only signal the weather gods needed and within half an hour the first of a series of squalls came roaring through with high winds and quite a lot of rain. Down came the laundry, then back up, then down again, as repeated rainstorms swept through the area until the following morning. We ended up rigging clothes lines inside the main cabin of the boat … it wasn’t pretty and cooking dinner with damp t-shirts and undies hanging round your ears is not an experience I’m in a hurry to repeat!

All night the boat creaked and groaned as the anchor snubber (a strong line attached to the anchor chain and to cleats on the bow) continuously tightened and eased, and squeaked across the bow roller. When we went into the cockpit in the morning, after 36 hours at anchor, we realized that our position had changed and we had started to drag. Normally we set an anchor alarm using a small handheld GPS unit, but this died and we are awaiting a replacement when Tasha arrives. We tend not to use the chart plotter at the nav station as this takes up a fair bit of electricity, and we have become so confident (complacent) in our anchoring technique that we didn’t have an alarm set up. It’s highly disconcerting that this happened; not only did we have 80 feet of chain out in 12 feet of water, but our Rocna anchor is great and once set, we have never dragged. Why did it happen after we had been solid for the past 36 hours? In any event we pulled up the anchor (a lot of sand and some grass) and moved in closer to shore and re-anchored with 100ft of chain in 10 ft of water, backing down strongly (2200 rpm). It was blowing hard with gusts up to 25 knots, but other than significant swinging we stayed exactly where we started. 

We spent an hour or two just checking everything was secure (and drying our laundry) before heading into the dinghy dock. Our arrival coincided with the return of a charter fishing boat that unloaded a small tuna, a medium barracuda and two large wahoo. I was jealous, it’s my ambition to catch a wahoo! The captain said it was “blowing a hurricane out there” and the client said it was “really rough”. It made us feel good about the timing of our passage from St Martin. We wandered along to the lovely Valley Church beach, had a swim and photographed some lizards. On our return we were relieved to find Cotinga where we left her!

Mike

17 04.547 N, 61 53.571 W

A late afternoon squall clears out as the sun returns (view west from our first anchor spot)

The lovely Valley Church Beach ... about a 1 mile walk from Jolly Harbor

A cooperative lizard at Valley Church Beach

This specimen clearly has some modeling experience!

Sunset Saturday evening after teh squally weather has cleared out ... from our second anchor spot