We tucked in a little closer to land again by shortening our scope back to 75ft from 100ft. The winds are lightening up a bit and with Night Hawk no longer next to us we felt comfortable hauling in a bit of our chain to see if we could pick up some intermittent internet.
I was very happy to see that we have a signal again (albeit intermittent). So I was able to upload some of my pictures to my blog. I started with the earlier ones in the boat yard but was only able to get some of them loaded before losing the signal. I got up to February 13th then lost the signal (drat). Once the signal was lost I started downloading pictures from my camera to the computer so most of the day was spent on the computer until Mary hailed me. We decided we both needed to escape the boats so the big question was – kayak or dinghy? The dinghy won out. Since it was still a little choppy with windy conditions and we were going to the Hilltop grocery store after a walk to the Atlantic side of the island it just made more sense.
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| This one has a bitten off section |
I was happy to see the little Colman outboard motor started up on the first try! It’s so nice to have a motor that works again! Wayne keeps reminding me No full throttle until it’s broken in… It isn’t broken in yet???? Sooooo I zipped (like a turtle) over to Azaya to pick up Mary and we had a nice leisurely ride to the first set of docks near Fox Motors. Climbing up to the dock, Mary spotted a shark in the water. It was a beautiful teak brown color against the white sand beneath it. It looked like part of its left fin was bitten off. Ouch! I know that some of the fish and a shark or two like to hang out at this dock. The fisherman’s cleaning table is here and the predators and scavengers pick up the scraps that are thrown into the water. Not a good place to fall in or go swimming. I flashed back to last year when Glen swam over to our boat (yikes!). The half-fin shark we saw (after looking it up) was a nurse shark – their favorite food: shellfish, but they’ll eat anything as opportunists.
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| This nurse shark has all parts accounted for |
After securing the boat and grabbing a picture or two we headed to the main road. I wasn’t sure which way the road to the beach was but thought it might be near the grocery store so we hung a left at the main road towards Hillside Supply and groceries, then took the road heading east towards the Atlantic. Not a good choice. The road started heading in the right direction, then turned and paralleled the main road and we were walking south. I knew this wasn’t right but we decided to keep going to see if it would turn or not. It hit another road that intersected the main road and this one continued on to the Atlantic coast. That was the road I remembered. Soooo next time instead of turning left towards the grocery store from the main road, turn left towards the market. This stretch of beach is a little cleaner than some of the others and while we didn’t see a lot of evidence of beach walkers there were a few footprints. I managed to find one sea bean, but that was all.
The walk back to the main road from the beach was definitely shorter (laughing) but we had to walk back to the grocery store too (not a big deal). I love the produce at this place (Hillside Groceries) and the meat at the other one near the Long Island Breeze. We (as women tend to do) explored all the aisles, picked up what we needed and headed back to the boat.
Wouldn’t you know that I’d buried my camera under the groceries I bought? When we got to the boat, another shark (nurse shark) was there and a sea turtle too. So I had to empty my back pack to get to the camera. The turtle was happily munching on stuff under the water and wasn’t about to come up and smile for me, and the shark was circling about looking for handouts. Since we didn’t seem to have anything and weren’t about to volunteer to become its next meal, it deemed us uninteresting and swam off. Guess it was time to load up the dinghy and head back to the boats.
After dropping Mary off and getting back on the boat, I realized that I was hungry. We’d been talking about Mexican food and I thought mmmmmm some kind of rendition of a spiceless soft taco (Wayne’s not into spicy food). I had tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, sour cream, ground beef, tortilla wraps, and guacamole. Throw a little hot sauce on mine and mhmm that’s what’s for dinner tonight.
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