Again, we had another glorious spinnaker sail. It started with barely enough wind to hold the thing up, but slowly progressed to where Begonia was screaming along with hissing wakes.
We picked up a public mooring at Homestead Bay at the southern end of the channel separating St. Bees from Keswick Island. Our spot was exposed to the wind and swell for the first evening, but we were hoping our line-of-sight to Mackay (on the mainland) would at least give us a pretty good cellular signal.
We did end up having a signal that ranged from terrible to non-existent. The current against the wind made for a lot of shenanigans with the hard plastic mooring banging against the hulls. The mooring also turned out to be pretty far from shore, particularly when adding in the extra distance that would be required to fight the strong currents.
We toughed it out there for one night and then decided we had to try to move somewhere with better protection. We picked the cove just over the island from us to the south,
When we arrived, the depths in the bay turned out to be five to ten meters more than indicated on the chart – around seventeen meters. Getting closer in to shallower spots where others had reported dropping anchor, we could clearly see that the bottom was almost entirely live coral. Dropping an anchor there is not only uncool it’s illegal. We milled around for a bit, looking for anywhere in the deep, sandy section where we could also get a signal, but we couldn’t find anything suitable that wasn’t endangering the coral. We decided to move on to Plan B.
We headed back north. This time we went past the mooring balls at Homestead Bay to Victor Bay on the south side of Keswick Island. There, we found a big patch of clean sand, protection from several days of forecast north winds AND we had just a smidge of 4G. Well, there you go. We’re done!
In the morning, we took the dinghy to the biggest of the beaches in Victor Bay. As soon as we set foot in the sandy shallows, Maryanne noticed that the big patch of weed to our right was moving and guessed it was actually a big school of fish, keeping tightly packed together as they milled around. Then some sort of much bigger fish arrived that looked like it may have been a Dorado. It dove into the school. The whole ball parted as the big fish went through and then recombined behind as if they were droplets of oil in a pan and the Dorado was a splash of soap. It made half a dozen passes, presumably eating its fill, and then streaked off to deeper water. After poking around the beach for a bit, we found no trails to the interior, but we did find plenty of picturesque rocks upon which to scramble.
It was a lot of fun just watching the fish move about in a tight group
Victor Bay on Keswick Island - Isn't it beautiful?
The rocks were full of exquisite patterns waiting to be discovered
When we were done with that, I had a swim on our anchor as an excuse to cool off from the row in the baking sun. Again, like back at Brampton, the coral was mostly overgrown with weed. I did find a few little spots of color that were still holding on, though. In the zone between there and shore, there was a lovely forest of weed waving in the current that seemed to be acting as a nursery for several different types of fishes.
I was feeling much cooler after that, which made it much easier to enjoy an afternoon on the boat lounging in the tropical heat.
We had a few more days at Keswick, where our primary activities were struggling with sporadic internet and watching the daily arrival and departure of the constant stream of southbound boats. Every day, it was the same thing: The first boat would arrive, see us at anchor, decide that out of the whole sweep of the bay, Begonia must be THE anchorage and make a beeline for us. Then, once they got right next to us, they seemed to all decide we were way too far back over the sand at our depth of ten meters. We must be idiots, so they were going to go forward and anchor in the sand at four meters. Except that there is no sand at four meters, just coral. When steaming towards it, the depth sounder goes: 10, 10, 10, 9.6, 4, 2.2, 1.3. Aah!!
There would then follow a bunch of engine noise as the boats are slammed into full reverse to try to keep from hitting. Sometimes, this would be accompanied by shouting from the person at the bow. They would try a few more spots, decide they didn’t like any of them, and then finally resign themselves to anchoring in the ‘back’ with us.
Again, instead of picking any number of sandy spots along half a mile of bay, where the depth is ten meters, they would drop their anchor practically on top of ours, put out half of the scope we had, and then shut down the engine without backing down.
At this point, it was difficult for me to resist the urge to go on deck and yell, “Hey, what the hell‽”, but I was learning that it wasn’t usually necessary. Within a few minutes, the person at the barbecue at the back would usually notice we were getting a little too close to them (yeah, ‘cause we’re moving!) and say something to the skipper, who would stare at us for a while, then reluctantly put down his drink so he could move the boat to a different spot, which was invariably only about twenty meters to the side. That way, we’d still be able to eavesdrop on their dinner.
When the second boat arrived, they would go through the whole same process as the first until the very end part, where they would try their hardest to anchor so that they were halfway between us and the first boat. It usually took until there were five or six boats anchored before new arrivals would risk trying to anchor away from the group.
What was strange about them was that they seemed to have a TV blaring the whole time. It wasn’t until they were setting anchor that I realized it wasn’t the TV. The noise was the skipper. She was SCREAMING the whole time at the other person, who was presumably her husband. Occasionally, I would hear a low syllable or two from him in response, but 98% of the sound was coming from her. I gathered she was NOT happy with anything about him or the bloody damn boat trip they were on.
The thing was, though, that this tremendously unhappy woman had a very particular voice. It was high and loud and raspy and sounded exactly like every male British skit comedian when they are dressed up in drag and playing a woman, shouting their lines in exaggerated falsetto. Her dressing down of the poor chap sounded just like Eric Idle doing a bit. I knew I shouldn’t, but it was hard not to chuckle at each note.
Okay, we’ve all had good days and bad. When we were out exploring in the dinghy later, they passed us just beyond conversational distance in theirs. They weren’t bickering and we all exchanged waves that were friendly enough to say hi, but not so much to be an invitation to alter course. They followed the edge of the coral around the bay and then headed back to their boat. Since the direct path would have taken them right past Begonia, we prepared ourselves for a possible visit, but they ended up taking a semi-circular route that kept them well out of range. Then they upped anchor and left in the big boat. Well, I suppose that’s one less uncomfortable moment for all of us.
Two nights later, the weather was starting to get a little sloppy and the bay was full of boats who had come to avoid the worst of it for the night. As I went forward to check our anchor bridle, I heard a familiar sound and felt an involuntary chuckle rise within me.
The Screamer was back. Because they were one of the last boats to arrive and because they were a monohull, they were anchored way in the back out of the protection of the point forming the bay. We were pretty miserable where we were, but we’ve seen worse and conditions were supposed to improve in a few hours. We felt for the monohulls, some of the smaller of which were rolling back and forth through twenty degrees in the swell. The Screamers weren’t moving around that much, but it was still clearly way too much for her. It looks like the romantic sailing vacation was not going as planned. I couldn’t make out everything she was yelling because she was a bit too far away, but one particularly loud bit I did understand was, “I AM NOT STAYING IN THIS ANCHORAGE TONIGHT!!!!”
Surely, she’s just blowing off some steam, I thought. There’s nowhere to go. I looked at my watch. The sun was setting in seven and a half minutes.
Nope! Five minutes later, while the rest of us were all standing on our decks to watch the last rays of the sun disappear, they pulled up anchor and pointed out to sea. Their engine could not be heard over her shrieking. At first, I thought they would just try to tuck in as much as they could in the same bay, but then they headed at Mackay. It would take them about three hours to motor there, but the marina should be nice and protected and she could leave him there with the boat and stomp off to a hotel if she liked.
Then I saw them head around the corner. Oh no! That bay wasn’t nearly as smooth and the only other thing beyond was the moorings at St. Bees, which even Maryanne and I couldn’t take on a nicer day than this. I imagine that boat is going to be coming up for sale really soon.
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