Virgin Islands 2014: Peter Island to Cooper Island

The morning rose and we discovered that the starboard engine was empty of coolant. I suspected that I hadn't closed the coolant cap properly during the previous coolant check, which caused the coolant to all leak out while the engine was running. We filled the coolant back up but I decided that the prudent thing to do was to bring the boat back to Conch Charters anyway.

From Virgin Islands 2014

Well, as we approached the mooring buoys off Burt's point, the alarm went off again and I found myself once again mooring with only the port engine! This validated the prudent decision we'd made earlier, and to reward us we got a few rainbows while waiting for the repair man to show up. When he showed up, he looked at it and realized that the water pump had broken, leaking coolant all over the place. "This is going to take at least an hour to fix, so feel free to go ashore."

We went ashore, reprovisioned and generally cooled our heels until the repair men (he didn't clone himself: he got reinforcements) declared the engine fixed. We ended up leaving Tortola around noon, and immediately headed for Cooper Island, since there was not a moment to spare in acquiring a mooring buoy: we ended up getting one of the last 3 available, and the others were immediately filled up within minutes after we were secure.

From Virgin Islands 2014

We took the tender over to the Cooper Island resort, and spent the rest of the day, snorkeling, getting ice cream, and swimming on the beautiful swimming beach. I decided to swim back to the boat using mask and snorkel, instigating a race with the tender. Unfortunately, I got lost and headed for the wrong boat and had to be steered back to the Sail Pending by the tender, which ensured that I lost.

It was a rolicking ride, because our late arrival meant we had one of the most exposed mooring buoys available, but we slept well, except for my son waking up in the middle of the night and upon seeing my CPAP mask, decided that since daddy was wearing a snorkel at night, he had to have his snorkel as well.

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