Mission Aborted

We finally decided to head North this morning, in search of good snorkeling grounds. As we weighed anchor and headed gingerly out of the harbor with very little water under the keel, I pointed out a looming dark cloud on the horizon. “Do you think that will amount to anything?” I asked my captain. He hoped not … so off we went – directly into a major rainstorm.

This isn’t fun, we agreed – let’s turn back. So back we went – and anchored in the same harbor at Monument Beach that we had just left, a little too close to a boat named “Anju”. But it was pouring, we were soaked, and we decided it would be OK.

Once the rain stopped, we had a lovely walk and swim at the beach off the harbor, and had just arrived back to the boat when Anju’s owners, Philip and Christine, dinghied over. They were wondering if we would have trouble retrieving our anchor, which, with the wind shift, was now directly under their boat. Having decided that none of us would worry about it, since no one was leaving yet, we invited them aboard for a drink. They turned out to be a wonderful couple, and extremely experienced sailors who had been living on their boat full-time since 1997.

When we mentioned our problems with the solar panels (still not working), Philip immediately jumped into action, and before long he and Jeff were working together deep in the bowels of the aft end of the boat, while Christine and I traded sailing stories. The guys decided the problem was a blown fuse, and Philip took the manual back to his boat to try and figure out just what had caused the problem. He’d be back tomorrow to help us sort it out, he promised.

So, our mission to find snorkeling may have been aborted – but what good fortune to have returned to meet these two new friends, and probably solve the solar panel problem to boot! As the great old song says … “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need” (oh yeah).

Postscript: This post was written last night. Philip came to the boat today as promised, and after much attention by both him and Jeff, the solar panels are finally working - YAY!