The squalls started at about 3pm yesterday afternoon, just as we were leaving The Boathouse restaurant after yet another excellent lunch. We planned to stop by The Mailbox as Wednesday is "new mail" day and perhaps our toilet parts are here. It was starting to rain with the promise of becoming a heavy downpour, so we decided to hightail it back to So It Goes.
Throughout the afternoon and early evening, we had quite blustery gusts, accompanied with white caps here in the Simpson Bay Lagoon in St. Maarten. There were also short periods of rain which meant you had to close the hatches and sweat for a bit until the rain stopped... then there wouldn't be a breeze, then the cycle would start over.
By late evening it really picked up. Sometime after 11:30pm when I was getting ready for bed, I took a peek outside and noticed a boat to our starboard that had left around 6pm. Hmmm, where did they go & why, and why did they come back after dark? Before pondering those questions for too long, I noticed that the boat seemed to be getting closer to us. I woke up Bob (didn't realize he fell asleep during the DVD) and asked him what he thought. Well, he noticed that the boat was now appearing to be dragging away from us.
I went below and got our handheld spotlight. We shined it on the boat and yes, it was the boat that left earlier as perhaps his anchor wasn't holding then. There was a dinghy behind so someone was aboard but didn't appear to be aware of his situation. A few minutes later, somebody came out to probably to see why someone had hit his boat with a spotlight, and noticed that he wasn't in Kansas anymore...
Bob was getting our dinghy ready to assist but the person had started his engine and appeared to have the situation under control. It started to rain, but fortunately only a few drops and not the deluge we had several times earlier.
He managed to putt off OK and we soon lost sight of him (it was very dark as it in a new moon) but we took comfort in knowing that we were no longer in his flight path.
From previous experience, we know not to be overly smug about our anchor and kept checking our location throughout the night. According to the airport, we had gusts up to 36MPH. This morning we have had constant wind but no rain since 7am. Daytime gusts don't seem as bad as those in the night and we swing from East to South, back and forth, during these gusts. Just a tropical wave blowing through... It is quite foggy looking out and I wonder if that is due to Montserrat or Sarahan dust... Oh well, so it goes... getting quite a bit of web work accomplished though.
It looks like the rain has passed us. We will probably go check our mail soon and have lunch at "Island Seafood" Chinese restaurant ($5 lunch specials) across the street from Palapa Marina. Hope you are having a good day!
