Ben and Moose did some repairs and changed the generator oil.
Nearby, there were two fishing boats. One of the tenders, with two guys, came by our boat to chat, then asked if we would trade them fish for beer. Shucks. This was one time we were bummed that neither of us drink beer and we don't have any on board. We offered what we had- water, ginger beer, and Goombay- but they said they had all that on their boat, and that they really wanted cold beer. They were out here from Long Island (Bahamas) for about another week and have been here for 10 days already.
Ben and I both realized we missed out on stocking up on beer for these important swaps! Down here in the Ragged Islands, there isn’t much, so the next time we come across a liquor store, we will buy a few cases to keep on hand.
We played a lot of card games today. I taught the girls Spit/Speed and Slide from my summer camp days. Looked up a few other games and tried those out too. Some were better liked than others.
Originally planned to play at the beach but when I was reading reviews- due to the fishing boats (fish scraps being thrown into the water) here, there are some resident bull sharks. We will not be swimming here.
Tomorrow we start moving further south a few days at a time, with plans to head to Acklins & Crooked Islands on Wednesday.
HUGE waves to take on the beam in the morning on our first journey south, behind the Crooked Islands. Taking waves on the beam means they're rolling under us, one hull at a time, creating a sideways rocking feeling that also feels like you're going to tip all the way to the side before the wave starts to roll the other side. If it were following or head-on, it wouldn't have been as bad. Ben thought they were a max of 6 feet. I thought a max of 8-12. It was only bad when we weren't behind an island, for about 30 min to an hour at a time yours truly donned the ever-fashionable (but life-saving) life vest and had the phone in a dry bag. I was literally ready for anything, except for sharks. 😂 The kids and Hattie were hunkered down on my bed with their own cuddle buddies. Moose came up to the cockpit every now and then with a damage report for us. Mostly this consists of things jumping or sliding around and falling off of shelves or countertops. When we are expecting big waves, we usually put things away, but we weren't expecting these to be that bad for that long.
Anchored at Buenavista Cay and another catamaran was there. Daryl was very welcoming, waving to us as we pulled in to anchor. We later found out he had seen us coming in on AIS and tried hailing us on the VHF, but we didn’t ever hear him.
We went to the beach to play in the sand and get off the boat. With the way the tide was, there was a steep drop just past where the waves were rolling onto the shore, which kept everyone close and easy to keep an eye out for sharks as we weren't that far from more fishing boats.
Daryl and his dog, Bandit, came to the beach and we met them and chatted with Daryl for a bit. Bandit 🐕 was a cute doodle mix dog that reminded us a little of the Grasshoppers' dog and a little of the Baldners' dog. They started in Fort Lauderdale end of December and are headed to Panama Canal to get to the South Pacific, no timeline. He is just waiting on the winds to take him on his sailing catamaran.
Daryl needed help seeing if his AIS and VHF were working accurately, so Ben was able to help with that once we were back on our own boats. He has the same plan as us for tomorrow, so maybe we will run into them again.
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