Prickly Pear Island, BVI

We like this anchorage.  There is no need to move.  It is fairly close to the channel so if the weather holds and we can leave tomorrow, it will be an easy exit.  Today, I spent the morning catching up on this log.  Larry spent the time making sure everything is ship-shape for our open water journey.  Lucky for us, he took this time.  It turns out, sometime (no idea when), the attachment that holds the mizzen boom to the mizzen mast broke.  He found one of the pieces on the deck.  Being the genius that he is … he found a way to put it back together, even though pieces were missing.  Had he not found this problem, I’m sure we would have had major issues in the seas we’ll experience the next couple of days.  Larry did a detailed overall check of all deckside stuff (standing rigging, solar panel mounts, dinghy mounts, lifeline mounts, bimini mounts, how the dockbox is attached to our rear cabin, mainsail and headsail attachments, etc).  No other issues were detected.

We spent the remainder of the day cleaning, tidying, doing a few things off the ‘to-do’ list.  It wasn’t fun but we really needed a work on the boat day.  She’s small and can get in disarray so easily.  I need to work harder on keeping her ship-shape!

In the evening, a horrible storm blew thru the anchorage.  The winds were 35-40 knots and even in the protected bay, the waters got rough.  The rain was so heavy, visibility dropped to about 50 ft at times.  We were anchored about 100 ft off the beach and the winds were blowing us into the shore.  We watched our anchor point to make sure we didn’t drag any closer.  All I could think about was, will it storm like this tomorrow night when we’re out in the open seas?  I hope not!

After about 2-hours, the storm passed and the weather calmed.  We played Kings Cribbage (a board game on the principle of cribbage itself) to pass the time.  It was fun … maybe because I won 2 of the 3 games.  This is unusual … Larry usually kicks my butt in anything related to Cribbage!