At one point, as Sten was grinding on one of the primary winches, trying to get a decent shape out of our bag of a jib, Suzy looked at him and deadpanned, "you're doing a fine job of stretching rope." She has been such a great guest - pitching in on boat chores, steering and anchoring; she's comfortable in a seaway; not cranky the morning after a rolly, squally night at anchor; and she brought us red meat. Frankly, she's set the bar awfully high for all of our future guests.
It was a long sail to windward, into a decent swell and we ended up a couple of miles to leeward of West Cay, where pretty much everyone turns on the engine for a couple of miles of dead into the wind motor sailing to get up to the anchorage. Those couple of miles to leeward turned into a 2 knot motor sail into a very nasty 5ft wind chop and adverse current. For reference, in reasonable conditions we motor at 6-6.5 knots. Very frustrating... That was capped off by having to anchor in the middle of a squall. We tried several times to get the anchor to set, but it wasn't happening, so Sten dove on it to find out what the problem was. The bottom was hard-packed coral gravel with some beach ball sized rocks thrown in for good measure. There was no way the CQR was going to dig into that stuff, no matter how much scope we gave it. So we moved back to our old spot on the north side of the anchorage.
By now we were completely soaked, and chilled. For our evening sundowner, I decided that it was time to make that classic sailors drink - hot buttered rum. Um, yuck? Who decided that floating butter on top of a drink was a good idea? It isn't. Next time we are suffering from mild hypothermia at cocktail hour I'll stick with the Bailey's and hot cocoa.
For dinner, Suzy took us out to the Gingerbread House. We had an excellent meal sampling their tasty curries and sides.
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