You Are Grounded!

Monday, October 17

We weighed anchor at 10:00, heading toward Antipoison Creek.  (Gotta love that name.) It's a bright, beautiful, sunny day.  The water is sparkling like a million jewels.

By noon we were headed into the Creek.

We've always heard that you either have gone aground, or you will go aground.  We've always been in the latter group.  Today, we joined the former.  While entering Antipoison Creek, we had to skirt around some fish stakes and nets in the water while staying in the narrow channel.  We thought we were doing fine, and we were still in the channel according to our chartplotter.  Unfortunately, the shoaling sand doesn't care what the chartplotter says, it just goes where it wants.  It's a weird feeling when you suddenly slide to a stop.  Fwump.  The bad news was that we were at high tide, so we couldn't wait for the tide to float us off.  Carey was on the helm at the time, so he put it in reverse--no go.  Then, he tried to go forward--no go.  Then, he tried our bowthrusters--a little movement.  Eventually, it was a combination of bowthrusters and forward throttle that got us off.  Woohoo!  We were happy to be un-grounded and moving again.  I'm pretty sure it cleaned some of the sea growth off our keel, but didn't hurt the paint.

The spot we had picked out as our anchorage was strewn with fish net or crab pot markers, so we moved a little further southwest to anchor.  We anchored, then had lunch and launched our dinghy. We dinghied over to walk along the sandy beach, which was quite pretty and made us feel like we were in the Caribbean!  Alas, we are still over 1500 nm from the BVIs.  On the beach, we found sea glass, heron footprints almost as big as my feet, dead crabs (probably the remains of the heron's meals), and tiny minnows.

After our outing, we weighed anchor again and moved up the creek to a more protected spot. It's lovely.

The propane for the stove finally ran out.  Our 10 pound tank has lasted since September 8th, and we've been using it everyday, sometimes for every meal. Good to know it lasts so long.  We have a backup 5 pound tank, so we're good for a while.

Time for showers and dinner, and then the Blue Jays game.