The Day that Would Not Let Go....

[N23d57:25, W076d18:99]

The Day That Would Not Let Go!!!!!

We woke up early Tuesday morning with plans to sail to Lee Stocking Island. Everything was going well until we tried to bring up our primary anchor. It did not budge. We tried several times to break it free from the bottom with no luck. A very nice Canadian man named Gary radioed us from his boat and offered to snorkel down on it. Wow! This was such a relief, it was really cold and windy and Glenn and I were not looking forward to getting in the water. Gary clipped a line to the top of our anchor and Glenn was able to pull it up. It had been stuck under a coral rock, and it just needed to be backed out.

We wanted to do something to thank Gary. I asked him if he was an Elvis fan. He replied "yes, since I was 4 years old". I ran down below and dug out 2 Elvis tee shirts from our stash for him and his wife. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you a very important piece to this story. When we pulled up the anchor the straight part was bent into a "c"shape, oh happy day! This was one time I was glad that Glenn brought so many spares. We have 4 other anchors on the boat.

Because we got such a late start, we decided to stop at Little Farmers Cay and get a mooring. We thought picking up a mooring would be a nice treat after the rough morning, yeah right! Ha! As usual the current was very strong. As I was steering up to the mooring ball and Glenn was trying to grab the line with the boat hook, I ran over the ball and it got stuck under our boat. We didn't budge for at least 30 minutes. Glenn put the out board engine on our dinghy and tried to twist Crossroads off the mooring ball. It worked. Some days are great and some day's just plain suck!

Later that evening we dined with several other cruisers at the Ocean Cabin restaurant for a wonderful Valentines dinner. We had broccoli soup, green salad, lobster and baked potato. Glenn also had steak with his lobster. For desert we had the option of carrot cake, chocolate rum cake or cheesecake with pineapple. We were with our friends Don and Kim so tried all of them. The carrot cake did not measure up to my mom's, but the chocolate rum cake and the cheesecake were divine.

We decided to stay one more day on this quaint little island. The seas were very rough and we didn't feel like a rough sail. We spent the morning doing a few projects on the boat and the afternoon reading and hanging out on the beach with our friends Don and Kim. Glenn made a yummy stir-fry for dinner.

Tomorrow we will head for Lee Stocking Island. Lee is the home of the Caribbean Marine Research Center.

Michele