Underwater Art
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After a slow start, (thanks to the excellent hospitality on board Ocean Rainbow the night before), we took off in the dinghy with Claire and James to snorkel in the marine park. This is a couple of bays away from our anchorage, and it rapidly developed into a wet T-shirt competition. Windblown water off the waves came over us by the bucketful, on a continuous basis on the 3nm ride.
The determination paid off as we found as soon as we jumped over the side, (ok, rolled off backwards). Good visibility and plenty of fish. But the attraction of this particular site is the multitude of sculptures that have placed there. Of the alleged 69, we reckon we saw most. In the midst of our swim, we were approached by a marine ranger boat with a demand for money. Like most people, we do not tend to take money with us when we swim, and so the 3 rangers on board arranged to find us later. Not sure why 3 were need, probably good for local employment, but anyway, they were not seen again.
Arriving back at the anchorage, there was a bit more excitement when it was noticed that Ocean Rainbow had decided to change position, unfortunately without her crew’s consent. Happily she was still within the anchorage, but it was a bit scary for us all, there but for the grace, etc.
Our intention had been to explore the town in the afternoon, but frequent heavy rain showers deterred us. For once we were on a timetable, so this will be for another time. The countdown has started to shutting the boat up for the hurricane season. She is booked to be lifted out on Thursday lunchtime, and then we have to strip off anything that could be a risk in high winds. That is quite a long task, but it has to be completed in time for us to fly out on Monday. So Wednesday was our last sail of the season from St George’s round to Prickly Bay. A pleasant trip, despite not having realised the the airport runway reaches out to the very tip of the island. A bit of a surprise to suddenly find yourselves next to a large plane about to take off with engines on full throttle!
Freebooter 