More adventures at The Baths!

During the "Lats and Atts" party last November, Karen and I met the managers of Marina Cay island and resort. Joe and Karen are from the Spokane, WA area. As we talked about each other's lives, we compared notes on people we know and places we've been. Unbelievably, we discovered Joe is a friend of my cousin, Larry Loges, from the Yakima area. We've kept in touch with them over the last few months and promised to go sailing with them whenever they had time to get away from the island. They had some time to get away last week and so we headed over to pick them up.

We sure had a great time...we left Marina Cay on a close reach and tacked our way over to The Baths on Virgin Gorda.

Karen and Joe had never been to The Baths...they were sure in for a treat. We picked up a mooring (much closer to the beach than the one Karen and I used the last time we were here) and snorkled in to the shore.(This little tidbit will become important later). Landing on the beach was tricky as the surf was up...didn't want to get "rock rash" from being scraped along the sea bed.

These are different views of sections of the pathway

After walking our way through the pathways in the boulders, we headed up the trail to the restaurant on "Top of the Baths" for a nice brunch. We spent a nice time talking and sharing stories, not realizing that a "really great one" was in store for us once we got back down to the beach. Although no pictures were taken, let me describe what we went through: Once we made it down to the beach, we saw that our boat was not on the mooring where we left it. We were sure that it was tied to the mooring properly, so could only imagine that it somehow must have broke free and drifted off. There was a similar boat moored off to the North about 150 yards, but none where ours was supposed to be. We talked about trying to reach the "other" boat, in case we were somehow mistaken about where we moored at, but it would mean another epic swim to reach it just to find out if it was ours. Then a young man volunteered to take me out in a dinghy to see what was going on. Notice I didn't say it was "his" dinghy. Anyway, off we went. Sure enough, the other boat we saw was ours...somebody had moved it. Don't know why, Don't know how, Don't know who!!! It appeared to be intact, so I took our dinghy into the shore, following the young man in his borrowed dinghy. The dinghies are not allowed to be left beached on the shore here...instead, they must be moored off the shore about 50'. While the young man moored his dinghy and swam to shore, I contemplated how I was to transfer 3 more people and all of the gear into our dinghy. Then, I remembered reading that waves go in patterns. In between the 4' tall shore-scouring breakers, there appeared to be a few waves that were quite mild. Soooo, after checking behind the dinghy for a rogue wave sneaking in behind me, I scooted on in right after one of the big ones broke. What I didn't anticipate was that patterns aren't always consistant. We got hit...by one of the 4' waves, swamping the dinghy and sending it crashing up the shoreline. The outboard engine's transom bracket broke off, letting the engine go for a short swim. Luckily, we have always kept the engine tethered to the dinghy with a cable. We managed to get the dinghy, engine and bruised people up out of the surf area where we could survey the damage. There didn't appear to be any lost equipment, so we finished cleaning sand and bailing water out of the dinghy and loaded the engine inside. Just then, the "real" owner of the 1st dinghy showed up and volunteered to come back to tow us to our boat, after getting his crew back to his boat. We got our dinghy launched back into the surf without a problem and Joe and I manuevered to the mooring line. Then both Karens swam out and everybody piled in, waiting for our tow. After thanking everyone over and over again for their assistance, we got the dinghy tied up to our boat and headed back to Marina Cay. We had a nice return trip, and hopefully, we can go out again soon. In the spirit of the quote at the top of our blog, we sure are more "experienced".