On a Mooring Ball for a Week

Posted by Sara

We dingyed into town on Thursday - a wet, gray, blustery morning - to drop Scot off for his taxi to the island’s airport.  His flight was one hour to Miami and then he flew West Jet direct from Miami to Calgary the next day.

A dark gray rainy day as Scot left.  Looking across the bay at Georgetown.  Will have to run the generator - no solar.

In anticipation of Scot’s leaving, we moored the boat on a mooring ball ($18/day) for the time he will be away.  The kids and I can anchor on our own now, but it allows us to not worry about the weather and moving the boat around the bay as the winds and waves shift.

Monashee happy on our mooring ball.  Still gray weather & no solar.

A wide-angle view of the bay we are moored in.  Monashee just on the right.  Georgetown across the bay in the distance.   Twice as many boats to our right as well.

The mooring field is a great location as we are beside a lot of other boats in ‘cruiser central’ and we are sitting about 30’ off shore from the most popular beach in Elizabeth Harbour, Volleyball Beach.   In addition to all the transient cruisers who come and pick up a mooring ball or anchor here to be part of the action, many tourists from the resorts on the main island rent boats for the day or come over in the water taxi to hang out on the beach and partake of the drinks and BBQ at the popular Chat n’ Chill beach bar.  There are two volleyball courts, several hammocks, picnic tables, a Conch Salad Shack, and someone has even thrown up their shingle on a tree advertising the ‘Flip Flop Repair Shop'.

Volleyball Beach just behind our boat.  Sunny again - solar - ya!

The kids can kayak or swim over anytime they want or we can just sit in our cockpit and people-watch.  The permanent cruisers who are around are 60+ year old sailors who I’m sure would be delighted to help us out if we have any issues with the boat.

The kids looking both ways for boat traffic before swimming back to Monashee after going to the Chat n' Chill beach bar for fries.

Our mooring  is also just on the west side of Stocking Island.  There is a 3 minute long path from this side of the island to a mile long beach on the exposed east side of the island where the waves crash in from the Atlantic (or whatever is between us and the Atlantic.)  The point is - the waves are big & crashy!

The beach is always empty and the kids love to go over and jump in the big waves.  We were nervous to swim over there to start as the waves are hugely powerful and the undertow is extreme but we saw a group of people playing in the waves over there a few days ago so figured if they weren't being towed out to sea, it was an OK place to swim - so we have found our secret swimming hole.

Mile long beach on the east side of the island with waves crashing in.  They don't look so big here, but there are!

Kids getting pounded by the waves.  It's our daily exercise.

I have a few projects to keep me occupied for the week.  We have fast WiFi here so I will get all our corporate tax info sent to our accountant.   I am also starting to re-provision the boat for the next leg of our adventure which at this point sounds like Cuba.  Cuba is mainly Spanish so I will also pull out the Rosetta Stone Spanish language program we brought along to brush up on my Spanish.  Having spent a year living in Mexico 25 years ago, I could speak Spanish quite well at one point so I am hoping the program will ‘refresh’ my memory.  The kids are also going to learn as much as they can.  They have been doing French up to this point to keep up with the Canadian school curriculum but since the computer the French program is on went to Canada with Scot, we will start on Spanish.