IT

We are in the Jumentos Cays and have been without internet for a few days, so I am trying to get up to date with our journey. This next post has no pictures as it happened in a strange place in the middle of a dark and stormy night.  You will have to use your imagination.

IT

We made it to Water Cay in the Jumentos! Our trip from Thompson Bay Long Island was good and not so good. The good part was sailing the entire way right into our new anchorage, not so good was the weather. Other than running the engine to pull the anchor and again to set it, we sailed the entire way! The weather, on the other hand, was much worse than predicted. Winds were forecast 18 dropping to 13 by the afternoon but turned out to be 20 gusting 25 and dropped to 16 gusting 20 by the time we anchored. The seas were quite large for about 15 miles of the trip, great practice for our journey further south.

We dropped anchor just off of a beautiful beach on the south end of Water Cay but the bottom did not allow for a good set. After taking the dinghy to the beach for a quick swim we decided to pull up and move to the next cove where the anchor dug in and disappeared in soft sand.

Here is where “it” begins…

We’re the only boat in a new anchorage, uninhabited area, miles from anywhere, nasty clouds rolling in, fairly strong current which opposes the wind twice in 24 hours making us dance around quite a bit; it begins to rain. I wake up around 2300 to the sounds of waves splattering on the hard iron shoreline, I get out the spotlight and blast the shore with a couple million candlepower. Damn, current and wind opposed we are now about 100 feet from the most unforgiving shore; a shore that would chew up fiberglass easier than cremebrulee. Ok, it’s late, it’s raining, we’re close to shore, but there is plenty of water so we decide to keep a watch and move if we get any closer. After an hour all is well, we’re keeping distance and the tide and current will change soon so we head off to bed. It’s now pouring rain with distant lightning, the first hard rain we have had since departing the US. It’s now 0100, pouring rain, pitch black-no moon, “Dave do you hear that noise?” to which I reply just out of a dead sleep “huh, what?”. Boats make noises, you get to know each one very well, and when you begin to hear a new noise it generally means something is wrong or about to go wrong. So I get up (from a dead sleep), try to regain consciousness and listen for strange noises. “Do you hear that?” Tanya asks again. “It’s just the waves on the side of the hull, go back to bed” I reply. As I climb back into bed, “thump”, what the heck? Thump, scrape, thump thump, thud. What the hell is that? I get up again and walk around the cabin listening, dull thumps and scrapes and occasional thud. As much as I want, I can’t ignore it, I pull up the floor boards, no water in the bilge, that’s good! But there it is, the noise, clear as can be, THUMP, SCRAPE, THUMP, THUD and the boat starts to shudder. I panic as all good captains should, no, wait, no I didn’t. But anyway, I’m thinking, oh my god we’re on a coral head, we’re going to open up like a can of tunafish and sink and have to cling to the masts until a fishing boat comes by to rescue us, someday. Wait it can’t be a coral head, I took the dinghy all around searching for obstacles after we anchored! Thump, scrape, omg. (This is all happening at the speed of light by the way). We grab flashlights and head out on deck to find whatever it is we are impacting! Did I mention pouring rain and pitch black night? So we’re running around the deck shining flashlights into the crystal clear water looking for something, anything. We head to the bow then back into the cockpit, nothing found. The noises are still there and the boat is shuddering (mildly). Tanya and I are leaning over the port side shinning lights into the water, I mentally make the decision to up anchor and move before we get holed, and then right in front of us, SPLASH (REALLY LOUD), GASP (EVEN LOUDER)!!! Hold your breath for as long as you possibly can and then inhale as loudly and melodramatically as you can, that is what we heard!! “IT” dove back in the water just as we shined our lights. It looked like a person, all I saw (or thought I saw) was a head, shoulders, and two arms, and maybe two small legs. I swear it was a person! Someone is under our boat???? Remember this is all happening very quickly, in the rain on a pitch black night. Once we calmed down we figured “it” out, sea turtle. A huge sea turtle was banging around under our boat, he was probably five feet long. So those arms and legs I thought I saw were the flippers from a huge turtle that was coming up for air. Thinking we scared him away we went back down below to dry off and try to get back to sleep. About 30 minutes later he came back, bang-thump-scrape, unbelievable. We’re tired and the weather is terrible and we had a long day, we need sleep. How do we get rid of this turtle that is accosting our boat? We tried flashing lights again, turned on the spreader lights, we tried everything, to no avail. He would not leave us alone. We even tried starting the engine hoping the vibration would scare him away, nope. Exhaustion got the best of us and we fell asleep to bang-thump-scrape-shudder. The crazy things that happen out here, I couldn’t make this up if I tried!