April 23, 2016 National Family Island Regatta

This morning on the net, I asked if anyone had extended their immigration on one of the islands near here.  Not all Ports of Entry have an officer that can extend your immigration.  Another boater came back and told us they had extended theirs at Rock Sound on Eleuthera.  We laughed about how different rules come up and how you get different answers at different offices.  So it is always a guessing game. 

We also had a call on the VHF from another boaters that we met last summer at Brunswick Landing Marina in Georgia, Pam and Ed on Pamalynn.  Nina on Moondancer heard us talking and joined in.  We all made plans to get together on Sunday.  They have been sailing together for the past 2 weeks.  It will be fun to find out where they have been and where they are headed next.

We really had a hard time getting motivated to do anything today.  We spent some time looking over our options for extending my immigration and where we wanted to sail over the next 2 months.  I am going to call a couple of the Immigration offices on other islands on Monday morning to confirm that the extension can be done at their office and the hours. 

We wanted to stay here over the weekend so I could go to church on Sunday.  And on Monday, I wanted to go to our wifi office to update this blog.  So we really didn’t have to accomplish anything today.  We organized a few things that we changed to allow for guests. 

We spent a good part of the afternoon in the cockpit reading.  We also had fun watching sailboats arriving for the National Family Island Regatta that is taking place here next week.  Bahamian native sloops come here from all the islands for 5 days of racing.  There will be activities on shore, too.  We have decided that we don’t need to be here with the crowds.  And there are a lot of restrictions as to where we can anchor.   So we will plan to leave here by Tuesday.  These sloops are very shallow and have huge sails.  They need crew to sit on boards that slide from one side to the other for ballast.  There were boats setting up and practicing today.  Bob and Nina, from Moondancer, actually jumped on one as crew. 

We saw a boat being set up near us.  Another guy came up to them in a dinghy and offered to be crew.  He threw out his dinghy anchor and jumped on board with them as they were leaving.  A little later, we noticed a dingy floating out into the area where the sailboats were practicing.  We figured out it was the guy who jumped out of his dinghy.  So we hopped in ours and went after it.  Dave was sure he saw the guy throw an anchor overboard, but there was no anchor attached to this dinghy.  We took the dingy back to the original dinghy anchored where the sloop was being set up and tied it to that dinghy.  Then we checked the bottom near there and found the other anchor and rode laying on the bottom in about 10 feet of water.  Dave just lowered our anchor and drug it across his anchor rode to hook it.  Then he brought it up and we hauled it into our boat.  It looks like in the excitement of joining the sloop for a sail, the guy didn’t even check to see if his anchor was tied to his boat.  A lady on a near by catamaran noticed us and waved at us to come over.  It was their dinghy and she thanked us for retrieving it.  It was just fun for us to get off the boat and help them out. 

That was our big thrill for the day.