A JOLLY GOOD DAY AFLOAT

And at days end I discover I have wifi again even though I am in a National Park with little obvious commercial development. Alvin Toffler was right we do have a global village.

Pics are in random places as my drag and drop is not working!


After yesterdays rain and squally winds today was perfect. Blue skies and a gentle southerly breeze was promised by the weatherman and there it was. I topped the tanks off at Yacht Haven Grande, they were really nice and helpful but how pitiful the profit on my 9.6 gallons. A slightly bigger mobo had taken 150,000 gallons last week. I asked him to repeat the number and the units but he got it right first time.
OK it was a ginormous gin palace, the biggest seen so far.

Untied the reef and cranked up the main on Elephants Child as we left harbor and quickly killed the engine. Pulled out the headsail and cranked that in too, I briefly considered the inner headsail but I was not going far and 5 knots was plenty, so left it in its bag.

I had been this route before so there were no navigation jitters, I could just enjoy a jolly good sail, no heroics or buried rails just a beam reach on a sparkling sea. I was a good boy and followed the guides advice and started the engine as a precaution as we approached Current Cut but it was not needed.

I had hoped to anchor in Cruz Bay but it was crowded and buoyed off and the ferries were queuing up so I went round the corner to Caneel Bay and was faced with picking up a free mooring or anchoring. Anchoring is so much easier than trying to pick up a mooring so down it went and I dinghied back around the corner to Cruz Bay to meet Jan one of the former owners of Elephants Child and to see about checking out. I collected a cheque to cover a missing inventory item and returned some artwork that they had missed when they moved off the boat. There was a queue at Customs and Immigration and I was tired so it was back home for a sundowner.

The last of the ferries and the last of the high speed wake producing noise making rushed off home at umpteen gallons an hour, leaving a truly peaceful anchorage, a giant but more conventional catamaran rumbled in and anchored nearby, but they were quiet too.

While watching the sunset and the highlights on the cloud edges I ruminated on the day, it had been a jolly good sail, yet two thirds of the boats I saw were motoring. If you are going to motor on a day like today, why bother with a boat with sails. Maybe one or two were delivery jobs but not all surely. The first pic shows a cruising boat, even the sail covers are off, surely it would have been better to sail.