To Big Major and then Black Point
On February 7th, we pulled up the anchor in the morning and moved around the corner to Big Major. It was still blowing like crazy, and we weren’t going to be protected at the best angle in the Top of the Majors anchorage for northerly / northeasterly winds, so we made the move.
It seemed like every other boat nearby made the move as well, and because we have a deeper draft than most, we had a longer distance to travel to get to the new spot. With crosswinds gusting to almost 30 knots, it was a lot of navigation through shallow channels, during a falling tide. We made it, though!
We managed to find a place for ourselves at Big Major despite arriving a little bit later. Not a moment too soon either, as a big old storm cloud rolled in right as we dropped the hook.
The storms blew through but the wind stuck around. We had a kid boat meetup on Cruisers Beach that afternoon (the beach was sheltered from the wind) and scared some non-parents away with all the kids running around. (Sorry not sorry? Heehee!) The crew from Biscuits came by for drinks on Oestara before dinner, as the wind continued to howl. We were once again ready to get the heck out of here…and planned to weigh anchor the next morning.
We left the anchorage at 8:30 the next day, and headed down to Black Point, which we of course have also been to before, but were happy to see again. We anchored close to the government dock, and Patrick started doing water runs while I headed to the laundromat. (Water runs = taking our jerry cans to the beach in the dinghy, walking up to the road to the water tap to fill them up, then bringing them back to the boat to fill our tanks. Total timed run, round trip = 20 minutes.) We were glad to be filling up our water tanks and getting clean clothes, as it had been a while since we’d had access to either.
While I was at the laundromat, Patrick texted me to say that we needed to move the boat as the tide was dropping more than he had expected. Once I got the clothes into the dryer, I met him by the water tap and we raced back to the boat to move, before we wound up hard aground. Rex was also pulling into the anchorage as we moved to a new deeper spot. We definitely cleaned the bottom of the keel really well as we were moving. Oops.
Anyway, then we were back to laundry and finishing the water runs. Once that was done, Patrick and I were both starving so we stopped in at Deshamon’s and ordered some pizza for lunch (Cecelia had already eaten, so she enjoyed some Minecraft time on the boat). While we were at lunch, we met Ben and Nruti, fellow cruisers who were also having a late lunch. They had done a season down here 16 years earlier when their twins were 4 years old. Now they were back on their own, on a power catamaran. It was fun getting to know them, and they wound up joining us along with the Rex crew at Lorraine’s later for Taco Thursday dinner. All in all, a good day!
