Today, Saturday, is the day we play librarians at the Georgetown Library. We almost always move the Glass Slipper to the anchorage next to town, so we have a short dinghy ride across Kidd’s Cove and through the tunnel into Lake Victoria, where we tie up at the dinghy dock behind Exuma Markets. However, today when I woke up the seas in the harbor where nearly flat, skies were a little gray, but overall it seemed like a nice day. Admittedly, I really didn’t want to go the trouble of raising the anchor, scooting across the harbor, anchoring, and repeating the process a couple of hours later. So instead I mixed up a little gas and oil, and filled the tank on our ancient, little 2.5 horsepower Yahama. We loaded a few empty water jugs, a huge bag of trash, dry bags for our books, and Prince, the ship’s dog. By 9:30 a.m. we were scooting across the harbor about as fast as the little engine could push our little boat. Now we generally don’t run around at full throttle, but I “fixed” the outboard last week, taking apart the carburetor, cleaning it and putting it all back together, and now I only have full speed. This makes it really interesting when it’s time to dock, or pull alongside the boat.
Shortly before 10 a.m. we had our crash landing at the dinghy dock, tied up, dropped off the trash at the yacht club ($2 bag) and made our way to the town library. It was our first time bringing Prince along, but he seemed to do just fine, other than scaring away the library cat. For all our effort, we had only one customer all morning, but at least we did our own library business, and both walked away with almost more books than we could carry.
By now some of the gray skies were replaced with dark storm clouds, and rain was clearly falling in the distance. It was time to scoot on. We stored our books in the dry bags, filled water jugs, and zoomed away from the dock at full speed. We knew we were in for a wet ride as the wind had picked up and built the once calm bay waters into quite a froth. Small waves were everywhere and we rose up and then slammed down, getting drenched every time. We probably wouldn’t have gotten so wet, had been able to go a little slower. Coleen sat in the floor up by the bow, Prince was hiding under the seat, and I was taking salt water in the face on every wave, while trying to steer around the bigger ones. My eyes were stinging so, I could barely see, but we had no choice but to pound our way forward. I was ever hoping the storm didn’t catch up with us. It took about 30 minutes to make it across the harbor to Sand Dollar beach, where the Glass Slipper lay almost quietly waiting for us in much calmer water. I shut down the motor seconds before we approached the Glass Slipper’s transom and the dinghy slid up alongside, perfect landing! We barely managed to get everything unloaded before the rain began.
It was time for hot showers and hot chocolate. Sadly, our search for hot chocolate was in vain, and we were even out of sugar and cocoa. I knew there was something I needed at the store! Instead, I managed to find some herbal tea for Coleen while I had mine black, hot and steaming. Time for lunch, then a nap with the rain pattering on the cabin top.