Day 127: Oh Boy

Tillaloo Cay to Hope Town, Abaco, Bahamas (mooring buoy)

May 21, 2022

Sigh…our windlass stopped working again. John can haul the anchor and chain, but the last bit is really difficult – it’s a 55 lb anchor and the chain is about a pound a foot.

We actually know what has needs to be replaced but we don’t have the parts – not just because we are in the Bahamas but because the company that makes the windlass is out of business. The springs on the brushes that we have right now are just a bit too big and they impinge the movement of brushes.

Today John tried to use springs from ballpoint pens but that did not work, either.

To keep us from running aground in shallow water, our boat friends, Nicki and Eric motored in front us and let us know the depths. Their catamaran draws 3 feet of water, so they can go where we can’t.

We motored into Hope Town on a rising tide and grabbed a mooring ball. Mooring balls are attached to some sort of anchor. Boats are tied to loops (called pennants) that are attached to the pennants. Sometimes these mooring balls are placed in fragile areas, such as coral reefs, to keep anchors from causing damage. There is a huge mooring field in Hope Town harbor. Apparently multiple people own the rights to rent the balls out.

After looping two lines through the pennant and cleating them off, we explored Hope Town for a bit with Nicki and Eric. It’s a really pretty area with lots of New England style homes.

We decided to dinghy across the harbor to eat in the marina but we couldn’t see Lailia where we had moored her next to S/V Wild. Some other boaters told us that she had become unmoored and drifted into another boat. The water taxi folks had moved her to another mooring and secured her.

This is still a really scary feeling. We did not know if Lailia or the other boat had any damage and we did not know how she could have been unmoored. We dinghied as quickly as we could back to our boat.

We had no damage. The lines were still securely tied and cleated. The pennant line on the mooring ball had actually become untied – it was still connected to the lines on Lailia. There is some relief knowing that we did not do anything wrong.

The boat that Lailia touched is owned by someone we knew in St. Johns Yacht Harbor. He let us know that his boat did not sustain any damage at all, which is another relief.

We are reminded that the outcomes could have been very different. We are fortunate that Lailia drifted slowly and that she was stopped by the mooring lines of another boat without sustaining or causing any damage. We are really fortunate that the folks around us took action and that she was re-moored (on better moorings) as we were walking around town.

Our friends have been very supportive and the time we spent with them tonight at dinner and then back on Lailia has kept us from dwelling on what did not happen.

Tonight we are going to focus on the stuff that worked and the way the boating community went into action. Tomorrow we will explore the lighthouse and then head to another cay.