We’ve just arrived at Black Point and our main objective is to get the dinghy back in good working order. All we need is carburetor cleaner, should be easy enough to find, right?

3.17 – Tuesday

As we were nearing the Black Point anchorage, we saw a familiar name on AIS. Revery?! Just as we were discussing if it was the boat we met last spring, they hailed us on the radio. We were crossing paths with our first boat friends!

After anchoring, we packed up to head into town to see if we could find some carb cleaner. Everywhere we went, it was the same – one or two shelves of random stuff, weird odds and ends, but nothing useful. This settlement is much more sparse than we expected.

Out of luck, we continued exploring. We stopped at a bar overlooking the anchorage and snagged a couple Kaliks, then headed out to the deck above the dock to enjoy the views.

Looking down there was a nurse shark in clear water – we’d also seen 3 nurse sharks at the dinghy dock when we landed! Can’t beat these views.

Revery messaged us and told us they were headed to Scorpios for 2-for-1 rum punches. Say no more! We finished our drinks and wandered back to town.

We ran into some Georgetown friends at Scorpios, Equinox, and caught up with them. They have friends that are supposed to fly in to Staniel this week and aren’t sure if that will actually happen. We told them about our dinghy woes, but Rich said he had some carb cleaner we could borrow!

Revery and their buddy boat One Life arrived and from there, the night is a blur of rum, dancing and laughter. Their friend DJ Papa cranked up the volume and we rocked out. Revery had glow bracelets, One Life showed me the mama cat and newborn kittens tucked in a cupboard behind the bar, and eventually I stumbled home to the dinghy.

Today was our last “reckless” social gathering. How long will it be before I can hug old friends again?

3.18 – Wednesday

I barely moved today. Our friends stopped by and apparently I’m not the only one who’s having a rough day!

3.19 – Thursday

DJ Papa had told us that if we want some of the famous coconut bread, we needed to show up at Lorraine’s mama’s house at 8:30am, so we got rolling pretty early today.

We dinghied in and tried to follow our instructions: go to the house behind Lorraine’s Café, knock on the door, and ask Mama for some bread. Well the house behind Lorraine’s had a bunch of stuff in front of the clearly unused door. A lot of our adventures like this feel 100% like trespassing but they never turn out to be.

We walked around to the back of the house and I could smell the fresh bread. I knocked on the door and Lorraine’s mama answered. She has JUST pulled the loaves out of the oven. We picked up two, one for us and one for Equinox for helping us out. We should have told Mama one was a gift for a friend because she sounded like she didn’t want to sell us two, but she doesn’t do reservations it’s first-come-first-served. Anyway, she was very sweet, and we chatted a little bit then headed out.

We walked a ways in the opposite direction from our explorations yesterday. We made it to the beach and found a blowhole there. It’s been a little bouncy these last couple days (only 20 kts, not too strong) so the waves had kicked up.

On our way back to checked to see if Equinox was out and about, Rich and Ruthie were in their cockpit so we swapped bread for some carb cleaner and Kyle immediately got to work on the dinghy motor.

The offending part is the tiniest bit in the middle of this photo. Kyle cleaned it up and we were back in business!

We took a little joyride to celebrate! We dinghied over to Equinox to return the rest of the carb cleaner. They invited us aboard for a beer and it was so much fun to chat with them! Their guests canceled their vacation, so that was a bummer. Ruthie served us Mayan shots (but they were actually rum) with some cinnamon orange slices.

They were total lifesavers. With the Bahamas closing down, I’m not sure if we could have found carb cleaner in Staniel Cay either, and when something isn’t running right that’s a weight on both our minds. We’re so grateful to Equinox for their help!

3.20 – Friday

COVID-19 is all anyone can talk about right now (and it has been for a while), and I’ve been reading way too much about it. The States locked things down about a week ago and people aren’t taking it seriously enough, which means the virus will spread exponentially, and a tighter lockdown is coming. The Bahamas is up to 4 cases and they’re starting to lock things down as well.

As such, we think it would be prudent to head back to the States, and if we can I’d like to get one more grocery run in. To this end, we decided to move to Staniel Cay today.

Today was the fastest I’ve ever shut the engines down, I think it took all of five minutes with them running to raise the main, pull up anchor, and point on our course and shut them down. We had some stronger wind today so we sailed almost on a run with just the main, single-reefed. I wasn’t excited about the reef and I talked about shaking it out, but we didn’t. I’m glad we didn’t because we did start to see 20+ kts apparent as we sailed.

The last portion of the trip was the shallowest water we’ve ever crossed, we always seem to hit the skinny parts at dead low tide, we saw 4.7 ft depths at the lowest so there were just inches below our keels!

It never even raised my heart rate, because I truly didn’t expect to run aground, but I didn’t think about the fact that backing off a sandbar might suck sand up into the engines and require some extra care until Kyle said why he was nervous. For the record, we didn’t take this one at full speed, we were doing like 2-3 kts.

We dropped anchor right behind Thunderball Grotto. After lunch we headed in to town. Another guy at the dinghy beach said that Burke’s was fully stocked with groceries so we made our way there. We never went ashore at Staniel last time we were here, it’s a really cute place, undoubtedly because it’s so touristy.

We dropped our groceries off in the dinghy and then wandered over to the yacht club, where I hear nurse sharks gather.

There was a shallow area with a few teens in it standing amongst the nurse sharks. They were super jumpy (but I can hardly talk, I wouldn’t even get in the water). The sharks were big!

With groceries warming in the sun, we didn’t watch the sharks for too long before we headed back to the boat. I think we’ll be fine food-wise until we get back to Florida, which means we are only making fun stops on uninhabited islands for the rest of our time here!