Noah started his ninth year with a variety pack of cereals and a mug of hot chocolate on Tuesday.
He and Beth worked on party favors while I zoomed up to the park office in the dinghy to find out if there were other kid boats in the area. Was able to round up four other kids in addition to Hannah and Frazier from Iceni, so we had a boatload for the celebration. Lots of wind with off and on rain showers made for an indoor party. They played pin the tail on the donkey with a magnetic dart on Noah’s hand drawn donkey. After cake, they all watched a movie as the wind generator was able to provide plenty of power. Noah said that was one of the best birthday parties ever.
In the evening, a large trimaran started drifting off their mooring over towards the coral heads around Emerald Rock. They called for help and the Park Ranger zoomed out and took them in tow. It turns out that the owners were ashore and guests on the boat had adjusted the mooring line without tying it off properly. The mooring line slipped off the boat and it drifted out towards the banks. No damage to the boat or the coral, so a happy ending to the story.
Forgot to mention one fun experience a couple of days ago. Changed the prop shaft zinc back in between the Majors. Although the bottom appeared to be a barren sand flat, an Atlantic Stingray swam over and was eating something on the bottom beside the boat as I worked. After finishing up the job I snorkeled out to check the anchor and noticed a couple of small blue crabs and a flounder making themselves at home on the chain. Noah, who had been visiting the kids from Iceni, came back and jumped in the water to retrieve several sand dollars. Guess there is plenty of life on the sand flat after all.
Yesterday morning we investigated the intermittent behavior of the Nexus instruments. Performing the recommended voltage tests, it seems the combination knotlog and temperature sensor died. The good news is we hooked up the GPS to the Nexus server again and now have Speed Over Ground (we think, as we can’t tell until we get moving again!).
After school and lunch we went to shore at the park headquarters and meet the Iceni crew. The kids fed the Bananaquits and checked out the whale skeleton, although they really enjoyed the yellow water tricycle. We all hiked up to Boo Boo Hill to watch the waves beating against the Eastern side of the island. Even though it was low tide, the waves were creating lots of spray as we walked along the cliffs. Beautiful views of both the sound and banks from here. We could see the Grande Mariner, a 200 foot cruise ship anchoring behind us over by Emerald Rock. I’m glad we explored ashore today, since tomorrow may have a few more visitors. The kids played together back on the sheltered “Powerful” Beach until we decided they had enough sun for the day.
We picked up the kids directly out of the water in the dinghies in order to minimize the sand brought home from the beach. Iceni traded their kids for our Hookah so they could clean the bottom of their boat. The kids made a cafe in the cabin, while Beth gave me a haircut as I hung on the stern ladder to keep the cockpit from getting furry.
It was a beautiful sunset among building clouds last night. As Venus and the Moon appeared, I opened up the water tank fill as it looked like we might get some rain. At 0100 Beth and I woke up as the wind was howling and the rain started filling our tanks. Squalls for the next hour or so brought gusts to 38 knots. It was nice to be in a mooring field as there were no panicked calls of anchor dragging on the VHF. Guess we had it mild as Lee on Windstar IV reported gusts of 60 in Georgetown overnight on the morning BASRA weather net.
Beth finished her Kumihimo project. She wove a fairly complex retaining strap for her sunglasses, putting the final touches on the seizing this morning.
We are not getting email on a timely basis. Seems to be a delay in the Winlink system. The 0800 weather email from yesterday came in shortly after midnight today. Received a notice from the developers saying that the 3rd party spam filter kicked almost all internet email for the last few days, so they have dropped the service. If you sent us any emails recently, please send them again.