Twin Cays

Thursday, March 4, 2004

016-49.800 N
088-6.180 W

Yesterday we moved the boat about an entire 1.5 miles to Twin Cays, which are to the west of South Water Cay. The winds continued to howl all night long and the seas haven't laid down at all. The problem with South Water Cay is that when high tide arrives, the swell washes over the reef and the boat rolls. Of course this is during the middle of the night. So, after two nights of poor sleep, we moved to the Twin Cays.

The Twin Cays are two cays lying side by side with basically a river flowing between them. Typically you've got 15' of water up close to the edge and the "river" is quite wide at most spots. Getting in is very tricky as there are lots of very shallow shoals to weave between, so you really need good light to get here. You're well protected and we had a good nights sleep on flat water. We still woke up when big wind gusts blew through. It's kinda humorous as on the daily SSB NW Caribbean Net, the controller joked that she was going to put a call out for "bored boat waiting to move." Everyone is just staying put waiting for these winds to die.

On the boat problems side of things, the NorthStar 961 GPS/Chart Plotter wouldn't power up yesterday. This occurred when we first got down to the Rio Dulce, but I was able to "fix" it by disassembling the unit (which looks like a desktop computer) and reassembling it. Well, my fix didn't work again, and it's down. I sent mail off to tech support, and based upon my past interaction with them, this will be resolved quickly. I changed the wiring to the autopilot so that the laptop can drive it, and we have 2 hand held units too.

Today I think that we're going to move the boat to what's known as the Tobacco Range, which is about 5 miles from here. It's just someplace new to explore. I will note that Brandy has stated that they're snorkeling as the waters are too stirred up by the seas.

A bored Geoff & Sue
Log ID: 457