Yesterday, we left Black Point, after a wonderful stay, and headed the 12 miles to Little Farmer’s Cay.  Although we were headed straight into the wind, again, we made decent time and the water was relatively smooth, so it was a comfortable ride here.  We decided to take a mooring ball for several reasons.  First, it is only $10.  Second, the current here is very strong and we are expecting strong winds in the next few days.    It was a bit tricky getting into the mooring field, but we were directly by Jim, one of the cruisers here.  Terry Bain, owner of Ocean Cabin, a restaurant and bar, was not there.  Thankfully, Jim (Solitaire) talked to us on the VHF and lead us through the skinny sections and away from the coral. 

As we got to the mooring balls, we each selected one and then the fun began.  Jim saw that the current was especially strong, in fact he said he had never seen it stronger here.  The mooring balls did not have a long rope with a loop in it.  Normally, you just use a boat hook to lift that long rope which is connected to the mooring ball which is held down in the water by something heavy, such as an anchor.   These mooring balls don’t have a long rope, but just a very short one with a loop.  So, you have to pull the whole ball up, run a line from a cleat on one side of your bow through it and back to the cleat and then run a separate line from a cleat on the other side of the bow, through the loop and back to the cleat.  This is probably tricky enough without strong wind and current, but almost impossible to do without help.  Jim came out in his dinghy and assisted us by catching the line from me, running it through the loop and tossing it back to me.  While we were doing this, JoAnne and Bill (Ultra ) were attempting to get their mooring ball hooked.  Jim went to help them, got them hooked and left.  As they continued to adjust theirs, we saw that they were drifting toward a sandbar.  We called to them, they unhooked that one and went to another ball.  The same thing happened, and this time they got to the sandbar and went aground.  They backed up, decided to forget it and went to find some place to anchor.  They returned this morning, got a more secure ball and are safely moored a short distance from us.

This morning I got up early and discovered that Daisy has started sleeping on the couch again.  She looked so comfortable that I let here stay there for a little while. I spent all morning and early afternoon cleaning the whole boat, inside and out and reorganizing items which had been piling up on beds and counters.  We’ve been having a great time, but have been so busy having fun that we haven’t had time to keep up with “boatwork.”  Mark spent the morning looking through the many hundreds of photos he has taken on his camera. 

After I finished, I decided I deserved a little rest, so I fixed myself a caramel frappuccino, stretched out in the hammock and relaxed  (photo above and video below).  Be sure to let the video fully load before watching and turn up your sound.