Definition of Cruising

One definition of cruising is fixing your boat in exotic places! Well that definition applies to dinghy motors too!! More on that soon! We ended up only staying one night at Little Harbour and moved slightly east to an anchorage between Jost Van Dyke and Little Jost Van Dyke on Nov. 27th. It was another protected anchorage with lots of mooring balls but we were able to find a good spot to anchor. There was a small craft weather advisory for Thursday (which means the weather and sea conditions will be dangerous for vessel like us) so we were very happy to be tucked in this little settled area. It was quite the day of sun and squalls!! We had one rain storm blow through with 30knots of wind – and our anchor held perfectly (always reassuring). We sat in the cockpit and watched all the charter boats tied up to mooring balls (all ahead of us) and hoped they were tied up correctly (everyone was!!). It was one of those open up, close up kind of days – as soon as all the hatches were open and we were relaxing, the rain would start and we’d run around closing up! We did manage to get some work done during the rain. We got our water maker running in the morning. We made about 40 gallons of water in an hour – it’s still so cool to be able to make drinking water from ocean water!!

Now back to the dinghy repair. As I mentioned in the last post, the dinghy motor started acting up when we were in Road Town Harbour. This morning (Nov. 28th) Mark loaded up a bunch of his tools into the dinghy and we headed to a beach nearby on Jost Van Dyke. As Mark worked on the motor, I explored the area. There’s a restaurant here called Foxy’s Tabboo (supposed to be very expensive), a Jost Van Dyke sign and a trail out to the bubble pool. It was great to walk along the shore and check things out. When Mark was done with the motor, we walked out to the bubble pool which is a tidal pool with an inlet facing the north. As waves roll in, water crashes through the inlet and makes a bubble bath kind of thing (just like Rachael’s bubble bath in the Bahamas). We splashed around for a bit and then headed back to the dinghy (but not before it rained again!! And we didn’t close up the boat before we left – oops). With fingers crossed, we pushed off from the beach and Mark started the motor. Unfortunately it was running about the same so more work is needed before the motor is happy again. That’s a job for later today. But at least we got to shore and had a nice few hours of exploring!