During Roy’s watch the engines were turned off and we enjoyed the sail, but unfortunately, an hour into Elaine’s watch the wind had died down, forcing her to start one of the engines to keep a SOG (Speed Over Ground) of at least 5 Kts.
By 1100, though, with a countercurrent raising its ugly head and barely a breath of wind, the headsail was furled and both engines were on, the story of our lives at the moment; blowing a gale while we’re berthed or at anchor and precious little wind while underway! By this stage, though, we had less than 30NM to go, but every nautical mile covered, was a nautical mile closer to reaching the Caribbean, finishing our circumnavigation and taking us closer to loved ones.
“Land ahoy” was spotted just before noon and by 1330 we’d picked up cellular data. Prior to that, reading our respective books had entertained us, thankfully, because it was rather slow going.
By 1700 we were tied to the reception dock, waiting our turn to check-in to the marina and then get shown to our berth. While the marinero was very friendly and welcoming, the marina office staff were definitely not, especially since Roy was basically thrown out of the office because he’d dared to walk in while another cruiser was being attended to and sternly informed to wait his turn outside the office. He didn’t feel too bad, though, when the exact same thing happened to the next cruiser who had just arrived.
Of course, we also met our first numpty on arrival, who cut us off coming into the marina to get onto the reception dock before us, then took up the entire dock before he was instructed to move forward to make space for us to tie up. Coming over to apologise was almost his saving grace, but indicating that it “wasn’t his intention” to “cut us off, then hog the dock”, sealed his fate because that was exactly what his intention was, otherwise why would he have done that. The blank stare he received from both of us said it all!
Regardless, we were delighted to have reached our last stop before heading to the Caribbean. A tad incredulous actually! With our World ARC flag flying proudly we are, however, causing some confusion amongst the other ARC cruisers here, but looking forward to all the festivities and build-up to our departure.
