Getting up at 6:00am, I made coffee for Arturo, and we ate a quick breakfast, checked the engine oil, and then started driving towards Salt Island, where the wreck of the Rhone was. The ride was pretty bumpy, but in exchange for a minor rain cloud blowing through we got a nice rainbow which didn't linger.
Arriving at the wreck of the Rhone at 7:30am, we had beaten everyone else there, and so had our pick of the mooring balls. However, Arturo had gotten sea sick from the transit (which was admittedly rough), and so picked the most sheltered mooring ball rather than the optimal one for diving. Massi's cabin leaked the night before during the rains, but customer service for Navigare wasn't open till 8:00.
We ate breakfast and prepped the dive tanks. Arturo snorkeled around to find the wreck so he could confirm he wasn't on the optimal dive ball. Meanwhile a professional dive boat arrived and sat on the optimal dive ball (which was out of bounds for recreational boaters), marking out where to tie up for all the following boats to come in.
At 8:00am, I called Navigare. They asked us where we would be and I told them we'd be on the wreck of the Rhone all morning and then at Norman Island in the afternoon. He said to call again after we had settled in at Norman Island. They apparently didn't like servicing a yacht at the dive site.
Indeed, it was a horribly long swim to begin diving to the wreck of the Rhone. By contrast, the snorkelers didn't have any issues, and Boen reported he enjoyed playing with the bubbles emanating from the scuba divers who were diving the wreck. Once we had descended, the dive was superlative --- the wreck was so old that it's been overtaken by coral, and wildlife was abundant. I frequently think that snorkeling is way better than diving because you have so much more freedom, and so much less equipment. The wreck of the Rhone is the exception that makes me think it's worth lugging around all those air tanks, BCDs, and weight belts, not to mention the hassle of refilling air tanks on a boat without a compressor. We even saw a full sized reef shark on the way up!
Coming back up for the surface interval, we discovered that other boats had disappeared. Easy enough, we moved the boat (after making sure everyone was on board) so that our second dive would be much easier. It should have been much easier, but I screwed up, giving Xiaoqin Arturo's BCD and giving Arturo Xiaoqin's BCD. We would only discover that under water when we discovered that Xiaoqin was overweighted and floating around in a BCD that was much too big for her!
We did the dive anyway, grateful for the easy access on our new mooring ball. By the time we finished the dive it was 12:00pm, and we ate lunch before casting off the lines and raising sail. While the wind was blowing nicely from behind, Norman Island was directly downwind and there was Pelican Island in between, so I opted to sail halfway across the channel before turning back towards Norman Island so we could make more speed.
As we passed the Indians I noted to Arturo that there was no one there! "Hm... very tempting," he said. But he reminded me that it was already close to 2:00pm, and we needed to be on Norman Island to get his sister's cabin fixed. I concurred, and we kept sailing until we got to Privateer Bay and found one of the mooring balls available. Surprisingly, it was one pretty close to the caves!
We tied up, and then I called the Navigare customer support. "Our chase boat is at Jost Van Dyke right now. We'll tell them about you so they can go there." Of course, they never showed up! Of course, we were not going to sit there waiting for people who might be no shows. We went snorkeling at the caves again, and the kids went paddleboarding. The sunset was spectacular, and when I got back after snorkeling and saw that the kids had left the paddleboards tied up but not stowed away, I went for another paddleboard!
By this time, Arturo had figured out how to get the watermaker working consistently. We were tempted to write down the instructions proper in blood and tape it on the machine, but of course, paper in an engine compartment is just a disaster waiting to happen. We realized this was the last night of running the water maker anyway, as we didn't care about returning the boat with any water left in its tanks!
Star gazing was a wash. Clouds still came in often enough to make it real iffy, and there were still occasional sprinkles. I flipped through the cruising guide looking for ideas, and solicited where people wanted to go for the last day. The Yans wanted to return to the Indians. I looked at the book and decided we could do another snorkel there, then reposition the boat at Pelican Island, then visit the Willy T's (since it was effectively a new boat and we hadn't been there for a while), and then come back to privateer bay. I went to sleep hoping that our attempts to fix Massi's cabin worked.
No comments:
Post a Comment