Lumpy ride to Black Pointe, 4/15

We were just two of eighteen worshipping in church this morning,
but it was good to be back in God's house.  Everyone was warm and
welcoming, as we have found all over the Exumas.  The girl you see
up front is Brittany, Rhonda's (the breadmaker) great niece.
And who do you think lead the worship music?!  Vivienne! 
The lady who never opened her grocery store yesterday.

After church, we weighed anchor for the five mile trek south to Black Pointe, our southernmost stop on this trip.  Matt and Karie weighed anchor before we got back to the boat, so we were on our own. No problem. It seemed.  While the wind continued to blow a steady 20 knots, we were hoping to be on a beam reach, and could at least put up a reefed main to steady the boat.  It was not to be.  We no sooner left Big Majors anchorage, and rounded Harvey Cay and we were nose into the wind in some crazy seas…the highest waves to date.  As soon as we weighed anchor, I took some Bonine, and put on my wristbands as I had a feeling it would be a stressful ride.

I have heard the term ‘lumpy seas’.  Boy, were they ever lumpy.  I have heard of ‘hobby horsing’ and that was just what we were doing.  To add insult to injury to the five and occasional six footers that were slamming into us, we were in a current that was also head on, wrapping around Harvey Cay, so we were swimming upstream.  At times we did more up and down than forward progress.  We even clocked less than 1 knot a few times with Bessie doing her best to plow us through.  It should have only been a 1 hour trip, instead, it took us nearly three hours- and it was a miserable three hours.  The waves were so close together, that the bow would be buried, and the stern would be up in the air, and vice versa.  I was trying to close all the hatches down below to keep the waves out, and went air born on the Vberth in the pounding.  Unbeknownst to us, Matt and Karie had tried to hail us on the radio to tell us to consider turning back, but we were out of range.

In all of the commotion and wind, we noticed that Windy was not working.  That wasn’t too unusual, as when Bessie is running, the batteries get charged up by her.  We realized by Monday morning that she had not been on all night either, even though the wind continued to blow and we were safely at anchor at Black Pointe.

Black Pointe is quite the little settlement.  There are three churches, a school with 50 students in grades 1-9, three restaurants, two groceries, a Laundromat, post office, police office, and government clinic.  There are 350 friendly residents who live there full time.  As soon as we were anchored near Matt and Karie, we decided to take a dinghy ride into ‘town’ to see if we could find them.  We noticed their dinghy was gone, and it was her birthday, so we thought that Matt may have taken her to dinner. 

Sure enough, we found them at Lorraine's Cafe. Though a small place, it was full of cruisers that were at anchor in the harbor like us.  One Canadian was playing guitar, and we sat at a table with Matt and Karie, and Mike and Francie who are also from Banana Bay.  We had the grouper for dinner, and it was good as always…hard to mess up grouper!

We were ready to call it a night afterwards, though Donnie and I briefly went to Scorpio’s, the local pub to use their WiFi and have a Coke.  I did a quick update, was actually able to load a few pictures, and then headed back to the boat.  We had had a full day, and were pooped, to say the least!  G’night y’all!