Never Say "Never"

Well – that was a rude awakening! At 7:00 am today we were woken up by a loud pounding on the hull of our boat – we were dragging our anchor and were not very far from the boat whose owner woke us up.

We’re anchored now in a very crowded harbour, because of Regatta, but our anchor is a Rocna – the best on the market. It has never dragged before, and we were confident it never would. Right. But in today’s howling wind, drag we did, and floated quite a long way, like a ball in a bowling alley. It was only with sheer good luck that we managed not to hit another boat – close call. Now we’ve re-anchored, with a lot more chain out – hopefully that will do the trick.

Other than that incident, it’s been fun and games so far. Two days ago was the opening variety show – so much talent among the boaters! Yesterday, I participated in the Coconut Challenge – where dinghies filled with teams of four, wearing life jackets on various body parts (mine like a diaper, so as not to restrict upper body movement), compete to fill the boat with as many floating coconuts as possible, before they are all picked up. The boat with the most coconuts wins. With 28 coconuts in total we didn’t win, but we also took part in the coconut throw, where we performed more respectably.

In this challenge, one member of the team throws coconuts backwards over their head to two other  team members who are trying to catch them with a garbage bag, while the 4^th member feeds the thrower the coconuts. In this one, we managed to catch all but two in the 30 seconds allotted – not bad! Our team didn’t win any prizes, but we had lots of fun, and Jeff photographed the whole thing – results below.

In the evening we had invited a friend from Mimico, who is here on his own boat, to join us for a birthday dinner for Jeff. I made grilled lobster tails and scallops, yams, asparagus, corn, a salad and chocolate cheesecake for dessert – no mean feat in a tiny kitchen with a two-burner stove! We had a great evening, and Jeff felt very celebrated, I think. Today is a softball game between the boaters and the locals – more fun.