We left Black Point early to try and get to Warderick Wells and get a mooring ball. The North field was full but there were still balls available in the Emerald Rock area. There is little west protection here but it does offer some protection from the northwest and there are rocks, bars and islands to help break up some of the seas from the west. Jeff and Deb aboard Nautilus and Kris and Susan aboard Flemish Lion are here with us. When we got here there were plenty of moorings to choose from. Later in the day, the field filled.
We first picked up a ball behind Nautilus. It had a lot of rust at the top and the pendant was attached beneath the ball. We dove on it and found the pendant rope was wrapped around the chain and had some chafing. We noticed that some of the moorings had the pendant attached to the top of the ball with the mooring chain coming up through the ball. This seemed like a better system with no rope below the water to wrap the chain. When we returned from our mooring inspection there was a 6 foot nurse shark on the bottom under our boat ladder. They are not supposed to bother you but it was a bit scary swimming over her to climb up to the boat.
We measured the depth at all of the other moorings with a sounding line from Fat Tuesday. We did not want to move to a shallower mooring as we only had 2 feet below our keel at low tide where we were. We found one that was suitable depth and looked like a sturdy ball and moved. We are now on number 20.
Once we felt sufficiently settled, we decided to explore a bit. We took Fat Tuesday to a lovely beach called Beryl’s Beach. From there we planned to take a trail to a place called the Wall but we ended up on a trail to Loyalist Beach. Loyalist Beach was beautiful but we decided to move on to Cockle Beach, then Alive Beach and then over to the Pirate’s Lair area. We think they call it Alive beach because you are lucky to be alive after traversing Cockle Trail. There were large holes, rocky terrain, and poison wood trees in abundance to avoid. The poison wood is a tree that has the same chemical, urushiol as poison ivy.
When we got to Alive Beach, we felt it was too late to move on. We could see the Pirate’s Lair area from the top on the trail and it looked so beautiful but we thought we may run out of time and did not know how long another set of trails would take. We turned around but decided to walk along the edge of the water back to Cockle Beach instead of taking the trail back. It was about waist deep and sandy along some rocks but it was calm. It turned out to be much easier than the trail and shorter too. We saw numerous conch feeding in the waters there.
On our way back to Beryl’s beach we met Eric and Henry with dog Gima. They are aboard the vessel Frabjous Day. Love it! Eric has sailed here many seasons. He rode out the last high winds at Shroud Cay and was not happy there. He is hoping it may be better here. He is on the North mooring field wait list but we all doubt anyone will move from there tomorrow.
We came back to the boat for salt water and soap bucket bath,music, dinner, sunset and conch horn blowing. Tomorrow we will try again to get to Pirate’s Lair, weather permitting. Flemish Lion has offered a pre storm gathering tomorrow evening before the winds pick up.
