Our first night anchored in Pipe Creek didn't go so well. The evening was wonderful, but late that night I woke up and noticed the little motor cruiser that we were anchored some distance away from was right up close to us. I suspect we were being influenced more by current, and he was being influenced more by wind, and so instead of swinging together, we swung towards him, while he swung towards us.
I made the uncomfortable decision to re-anchor in the dark, which is hard to say if that was a good idea or not. We easily pulled up anchor, and I was intending to move just 50 feet more away, but we ended up bumping ground in the process. I think it was rather light, but sounded horrible and scary in the middle of the night. No problems backing off it, but it wasn't much fun. We did get the anchor reset and were now seemingly too close to the one shore, but at least not close to the other boat.
It was a long night either way without much sleep. In the morning we moved the boat just the other side of the island we were anchored by, where there was both more depth, and more space to swing around. And on top of that, no other boats which was calming for us after the night before.
Happily anchored we spent the day hanging out. First a visit to the swing beach, which is just a large sand bar at low tide. Very beautiful area. Did some swimming and talking with other cruisers. After that Aria went over to Atlas's boat, while Theone and I did some dingy sailing around the area. Stopped at Thomas Cay and hiked a trail there to a beautiful little beach on along the cut. Just a nice relaxing day.
That night I also happen to catch out of the corner of my eye while sitting down below, a large display of fireworks streaking across the sky. Not the kind of thing you usually see, and upon looking into it, it was the latest space x launch that didn't go so well, and this was the rocket blowing up and falling back to earth. Quite a sight to see.
Next day we picked up anchor at high tide and picked our way through Pipe Creek and out by Compass Cay Marina, to anchor at an area called Rachel's Bubble Bath. This is a large pool of water where the waves from the ocean side spray over the top of a small cut, and true to it's name, the water becomes a bit of a bubble bath as the waves splash in. Very cool spot and we spent quite a few hours just hanging out in the pool there while the girls played in the bath.
After our time there, we were considering stopping at Cambridge Cay and maybe getting a mooring ball there. This is the spot we lost our dingy so it's possible it's cursed with bad luck for us. We had no problem getting into the area from the south last time we were here. There is a very shallow spot you need to pass to cross in, but we were at full high tide last time. I think we'd become a bit too confident and decided it should be no problem, even though we were on a falling tide.
But of course, it wasn't and it turned into a bit of a calamity. We were going through trying to take it slow, but we had current with us (not ideal in this case!), and as we came up to the shallow spot, we ran aground quite decisively. It's a horrible feeling, and in this case worse because we knew tide was dropping, and the current was basically pinning us there, pushing us onto the place we ran around.
I tried to maneuver a bit with the engine and wasn't getting anywhere, but did somehow manage to get the boat turned around at the very least, so we were pointing back towards where we had come in from (and quickly wanted to return).
However, no forward motion was gained. Theone dived in to take a look, and it didn't seem like there was much holding us. We also weren't leaned over at all, mostly just sitting with the keel on the bottom. Thankfully our friends on Atlas were following us in, and seeing that we were hard aground, were able to throw down anchor and come attempt a rescue with their dingy.
It took some pulling but with a spare jib halyard and Matt motoring off with it as hard as he could, we managed to get leaned over a bit and made a small jump forward. Another heave and we finally got forward enough to be floating again, and we quickly made our way back from where we had come.
I'm not sure what we would have done if Atlas wasn't there to rescue us, it wasn't looking good and the tide still had a couple feet to drop, so it wouldn't have been pretty. Lesson learned and we are back to being fearful of the shallow bits again...
After that we followed Atlas over to anchor off Soldier Cay near the aquarium. Of course, nerves rattled, our anchoring in what seemed like one of the easiest places to anchor ever (crystal clear water, 15 feet of depth, 100% pure sand), went poorly to say the least. Somehow we ended up with our anchor on it's back 3 times. We've never seen this anchor upside down like that. Who knows, but these things always seem to happen when your frazzled... Finally on the fourth try we got it set and put this little saga behind us.
Another boat named Fresh 2 Salty who are good friends of Atlas's, invited us over for dinner after our ordeal, and we had a wonderful, very delicious dinner, with some stories of other peoples groundings to help us recover a little bit. Can't say how much we appreciate it after a day like that.
Tomorrow we'll head over to the aquarium in the morning, and then figure out what we are going to do with the looming high winds coming in the next few days.
