In the morning there was some blue sky with isolated squalls drifting though. We were tired of sitting so we decided to go. We were making decent time but it was a little bouncy. Not bad at all in the direction we were headed.
But then there was a big squall in our path that I didn't like the look of. When I had done this before with John K we had gotten all too close to a couple of waterspouts in a squall like that.
First I slowed down to try and let it pass in front of us. When that didn't buy us enough I started turning north, in retrospect a mistake. The motion of the boat became much less comfortable as the swells started hitting us abeam. Strangely I was fine but Heather was uncomfortable. Usually it's the other way around, but when the wind was behind us she got a blast of diesel exhaust which she really doesn't like.
The squall stalled for a while and I ended up circling all the way back the direction we had come from. By then we were ready to call it a day. If I had known I should have initially turned south, towards the nearest middle of nowhere cay that was a good stopping point, call Great Sale. We finally turned south and headed over to the southern tip on the west side. There was a large trawler tucked way up in the harbor, and a little sailboat to his east.
We anchored in a way that we thought was aggressively close, maybe 300 yards off the beach, but another sailboat came in late and dropped they anchor at maybe half our distance to the beach and the shallow area north of us. The wind was from the east, so it shouldn't have mattered, until it did.
Another strong squall came through late that night. All the sudden the anchor alarm was going off and I was about 10 seconds from having Heather run up top and start the engine. The squall was strong enough to counter the prevailing east wind and back it all the way around to the west. We were now being blown toward the beach, and I wasn't initially certain whether we were dragging closer or not.
It soon became clear that if we had dragged it was only maybe 20 yards before the anchor had reset (yay oversized Rocna). The squall passed on and the prevailing east wind slowly resumed, blowing us back away from the beach. Lesson learned - local squalls can be strong enough to temporarily overcome prevailing winds.
In the morning the sailboat north of us was now several hundred yards off the beach. It looked like things had gotten a little too close for them where they were and they had to reposition in the dark. Not fun.
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