Apr 5-6, 2017
The winds are due to shift out of the NW, so it is time to find a better anchorage. Raccoon Cay has a huge cove, offering a lot of room for boats. We were the only ones there initially. Large rocks grace the anchorage that looked like good snorkeling areas, but we were disappointed. However, we had a very nice sized, 4 ft barracuda taking shade underneath Uno Mas!
There are a lot of beaches and inland hiking here. The shore has nice sandstone versus the lava-like ironshore, multiple house ruins, Spanish wells, salt ponds and sluices, and more goats! We never found the blue holes marked on the Explorer charts.
We did a bit of boat prep. Our next jaunt is going to be another overnighter, doing 24 hours. Angie did a lot of food prep, for an army, for a week. Mark rebedded the blocks that run back to the helm for our Main lines, transferred fuel, strapped everything down, boosted the battery bank with the generator, laundry, and we burned our trash on shore, in a fire ring for the first time.
Garbage disposal is something environmentalists look down upon. My question is, Is it better to take garbage to a landfill and let is set, and (hopefully) decompose over how many years, or burn it, sending smoke and pollutants in the air for 30 minutes? Which has the least footprint left on the earth? The irony is, the local island trash dumps collect and then burn. We burn it when not next to a dump or trash bins. Who knows when we will be able to find the next landfill? The remote islands are uninhabited, so no landfill option. Many boaters ditch their garbage in the ocean. Angie has a very hard time doing that. The organics can be tossed overboard and can be excused away as food for the sea life. The glass can be broken up and eventually gets ground back to sand, after how many years? Some people ditch metal cans overboard, reasoning that the metal deteriorates quickly in the ocean. Non-shiny paper can be shredded and eventually will decompose. Plastic, however, is death to sea life. So, we burn it like most sailors, choosing the least of the evils, in Angie’s opinion.
We had an exciting event! A catamaran showed up in our anchorage at dusk. They dinked to shore with a real live kitty cat at the bow, videotaping all the way. Angie was very excited, and thought she should go and introduce herself to the boat the next morning to get her kitty “fix”. However, they took off before that could happen. Oh, well! She will have to continue talking to our petrified pufferfish (No Name).
