Cruisers seem to spend lots of time waiting on parts … or in our case, refurbished windlass and Pactor modem. We leave the dock to go sailing, but don’t really want to anchor or be outside communications range until we get our stuff back & installed.
So we go dinghy or kayak exploring. It’s a great way to relax and stop stressing over when our stuff is going to arrive — it’ll likely be at least another week. I always have to convince David to put the dinghy in the water – it stays clean on the deck and keeps any precipitation out of our forward hatch, but it’s no FUN there!
Since we put the dinghy in the water, we’ve been out to watch the sunset twice, once as a sunset wine cruise, and taken an afternoon exploratory cruise through the mangrove mazes just outside our channel — well actually a few miiles either side of the channel.
I think it may be time to organize a sunset dinghy drift – where we tie several dinghies together, everyone brings a hand munchable appetizer and their own drinks and we go out, watch the sunset, chat laugh and enjoy! We haven’t done a dinghy drift since one of the rivers somewhere in the Northwest Caribbean, and it’s long overdue.
But in the meantime, look at the cool stuff we found .. a brown pelican takes off, while white pelicans land on a sandbar.
Look closely, you can see the reflection of the clouds on the water, but also a little blue crab skittering sideways away from the dinghy on the bottom. The brown tint to the water is the due to the tannins in the mangrove bark, the water is really pretty clear, just not pretty aqua swimming pool clear as in other places we’ve cruised.
If you see birds wading … in your dinghy or in the big boat, stay away! That water is too shallow for all but maybe a kayak & even then you may be doing some dragging to get across.
“Sunshine on the water, makes me happy” – thanks John Denver! Time to think about organizing that dinghy drift, got to run! Cheers! Jan
