Bruce, on lookout duty
Yesterday was a day of adventure. Bruce tried a discovery dive, he had to do some pool work in the morning and then we all went on the same boat in the afternoon and roared out to the reef. It was so windy and choppy on the way out it was a good thing we had our wet suits on. He really enjoyed himself, looking a googly eyed fish in the eyes for several minutes, as well as exploring around the reef. The experience of looking up from the bottom and seeing divers at different levels, some 5 meters above him and some nearly on the surface caught his eye. Barry and I as the only “certified” divers on the boat took off in a different direction. We were in a passage between the reefs and we saw several sting rays as well as quite a large turtle, Barry says at least 2 meters across.!!!!! The turtles are so graceful under the water, one small flap of the flipper and off he went. The coral was different from anything else we had seen so fun was had by all.
For dinner we went into the Island Bar to cook our tuna fillets and a baked potato, and the case of the missing potato was born. Barry was standing at the BBQ after the potatoes had been roasting for almost an hour and he was tending to the yellow fin fillets. Some guy came along and TOOK one of our potatoes, the nerve. Barry says he didn’t even have any other potatoes so it was not a case of mistaken identity, he actually stole one of our potatoes. Barry noticed the missing vegetable as the fellow was walking away and was so astonished he could not bring himself to mention the fact that one of he had filched one of our food items. When I reported our loss to the other members of our table, non of whom were eating potatoes, one Swedish fellow cried out “POTATO WAR”. Barry suggested from now on if we should carve Cat’s Paw IV into every potato that we wrap in foil.
The anchorage at low tide
Then, the storm. What a drama, the wind came up, the lightning flashed, the thundered roared, the skies opened and we had as much fresh water as we wanted. It howled all night, there were boats dragging through the anchorage, someone pulled up anchor and tried to take a mooring ball in the middle of the night, dinghies were puttering around to help, people were flashing lights to try and figure out what was going on. We had pulled up our dinghy out of the water and it was filling with water and the boat was reacting in a decidedly unusual manner. I went out dropped it and retied it at the back of the boat.
PLUS one of our sinks in the galley has given up the ghost. The thingy at the bottom of the sink that the drain hose is attached to, rusted so for several days all the water that we have been putting down that sink has been emptying into the boat, OH Joy. One of the lockers flooded, it had to be the one with all the paper towels and toilet paper in, and you all know how attached Barry is to his paper towel, it is major crisis time. PLUS the bilge was flooded and the bilge pump has several things wrong with it, the float was stuck so it did not rise therefore felt no need to work, AND, the screen for the pump was blocked so nothing would go through so there is poor Bruce in the cockpit pumping out the bilge by hand. I told him it was a good bicep workout and he was happy! AND LIFE GOES ON.