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Saturday, July 24, 2010Our First Full Day - Hope Town
The captains' rules are that no one gets up before 7AM. Capt. Simon gets grumpy if you wake him early. Only problem is that the sun rises around 6:30, but since we were all pretty tired most everyone woke up around 7. Unfortunately the ice cooler that is attached to the deck above the galley leaked and I woke up in a bit of a puddle. Not too bad though, just a bit of my shorts got wet and my pad and sheet were wet. But I just hung them to dry on the railing. 2 other people got wet too. Tonight we will put the deck towels around the cooler to absorb the water.
Forgot to mention that I saw a flying fish on our way over here yesterday. I kept watching for more but never saw another one.
Any way, first order of business is to wash the supper dishes from last night. This is done at the stern of the boat. First you take a dish pan and scoop up some sea water so that you have about 2 inches of water in the pan. Then you add a cap-full of bleach and some Joy dish washing liquid. Joy is the only one that lathers in sea water. Then you take a second dish pan and put about 2 inches of fresh water and a cap-full of bleach for the rinse water. The washer climbs down and stands on the swim platform and washes the dishes which are on the deck and just below chest hight. When you are done you dump the water in the ocean. Worked out pretty well actually.
Once the dishes were done Team A made scrambled eggs and sausages. Tasted great. We all have to eat on deck as another rule is no eating down below. Nothing tastes so good as breakfast on deck in the middle of the Sea of Abaco. The Sea of Abaco is the part of the ocean that is surrounded by the small islands or cays (pronounced keys) off the coast of Great Abaco Island. It is some what protected by the cays and is usually quite smooth like a lake. The Atlantic is more rough outside the protection of the cays.
At 8:15 every morning the weather for the area is announced on the 2-way radio. Today the wind was to be 12-15 knots. The temperature was to be 88 degrees but the humidity was so high it would feel like the upper 90's. Once the weather is done they ask for visual accounts of the various entrances into the ocean. After all the official business is over they ask if there are any announcements, new arrivals or departures who would like to say something. The local restaurants on the various cays announce their daily specials. Someone asks if the book exchange is open and gets a reply that the woman that runs it is away but there are 2 Buck A Book places open, one at Pirates Cove Restaurant on Guana Cay and the other in Marsh Harbour. One of the scouts has been recording the weather and tides in the log book and then records what happened on the previous day. After the weather and announcements the radio is switched to channel 68 which is the Sea Base channel in case they need to contact us.
After breakfast is eaten and cleaned up we set sail to Hope Town. When we arrived Team A made cold cut sandwiches for lunch. There is a large orange drink cooler sitting in the cockpit next to the captain's chair where we keep our drinking water. It's like one of those Gatorade coolers the athletes dump over their coaches when they win a game. We put ice in and fresh water. The boat has two 120 gallon fresh water tanks. That should last us the week. We go through about 1 1/2 of these containers a day. We all have 32 oz Nalgene bottles with carabiners attached. When we aren't drinking or holding our bottles we use the carabiner to hook the bottle to the railing wires around the boat. There is drink powder in the galley we can use to add to our water if we want. The choices are iced tea, Tang, and Country Time lemonade. The rule is that if you have a container of drink mix you must follow it with a container of plain water.
We got in our swim suits and lathered on the sun screen. I was using 70spf and taking no risks. We all got on our snorkel gear. I am so glad I got a prescription dive mask. I'd never have been able to see anything under water. We all jumped overboard and swam to the shore. The shore line was all rocky and the captain had said that there were loads of fish there. There were a couple of docks there too and fish like to hang around those too.
On our way over to the shore we saw about 8 cushion sea stars. They are star fish but fat like pillows. They were all over 12" across. In one spot there were 5 lined up like they'd been put there. the shore was very rocky and sort of like a small cliff. There were loads of beautiful fish swimming around. Most all were bright colors, yellow, green blue, purple, stripes and multicolor. It was amazing. In one spot there was a large truck or tractor tire that lay on its side and there were some large rocks in the center. It was beginning to turn into a mini reef. There were fish of various sizes and species swimming in and around it. There was a large fish hiding in the dark. It was about 8-10" long and red with big black eyes. It kept sneaking out and then popping back into hiding.
Mike saw a little fish get attacked by a bigger, but still small, fish, injuring it. The other fish all started attacking it til it was dead. Then the big red one popped out of hiding and ate it and popped back under. Freaky! We snorkeled around the area for a couple of hours then swam back to the boat.
We had a sudden rain squall and had to take our stuff off the lines and close up all the hatches and windows.The rain shield around the cockpit had to be lowered as well. Everyone crammed into the cockpit or went below. The boys that went below got out their cards and played a game called President. No idea what it is or how it's played but they seemed to like it a lot. I guess they had been playing it at camp the week before too. Mike didn't play with them though. When the rain finished the sun came out and we rehung all the wet stuff.
We had mac & cheese for dinner. Then dried off the deck and put the deck towels around the cooler. All our wet stuff was hanging along the boat's railing. We had to take it down before we went to bed and stow it below. Some stuff wasn't completely dry but we'd just have to hang it back out in the morning. Hopefully I'd be dry when I woke up.
Around 12:30AM a little dark cloud appeared overhead and proceeded to sprinkle on us. We all groaned, dreading having to grab our sleeping gear and trying to find spots below where it was hot. Kevin, one of the other adults who was sleeping on the stern, pulled his pad over himself to shield himself from the rain. My first thought was that the run off from Kevin's pad was gonna run my way and I'd be in yet another puddle. But luckily it was just a short sprinkle and we barely got wet so I laid back down and went back to sleep. A short time later, I don't remember if I looked at my watch or not, we got another short sprinkle but that was the end of it for the night.
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