Pride goeth before the fall

                            Nipper's was closed, but the view is still spectacular

The Great Harbour fleet lit out of Boat Harbour this morning with cloudy skies and 10-knot winds from the southwest.  Due to Mother Ocean being the windward vessel in the docking line, we elected to let The Office, Chutay, At Last and Pipe Dream leave first, using Mother Ocean as a windblock.  All went well, and Mother Ocean was the last out of the marina.  We have been towing her dinghy all around the Abacos, so that I could use it to jet in to the harbours ahead of the fleet and make certain the docking situation was accommodating to our somewhat unusual vessels.

As we left the harbour, Dennis throttled back so that I could bring the dinghy up close to Mother Ocean and hop onto her swim platform.  Jan tied the line to the aft cleat on Mother Ocean and looked up in time to see a somewhat sour expression on my face.  She asked what was wrong, and I said, "I don't like the way you tied that cleat hitch."  So I untied it and did my own cleat hitch with only a single "locking" half-hitch at the end, saying, "THIS is a proper hitch and will NEVER come undone."

You see where this is heading, right?  About twenty minutes later, Dennis got a call from the dockmaster at Boat Harbour, telling him that one of our fleet had lost their dinghy and it was floating outside the breakwater.  Dennis was about to ask the group which idiot let their dinghy get away, when he realized that I was that idiot.  Yep, the dinghy untied my perfect hitch and floated off in the first minute or two after we throttled up to speed.

A half hour later - after many apologies and some VERY good-natured ribbing from Jan (I deserved much worse), we had the dinghy re-secured and we were back on our way towards Great Guana Cay.  Dennis turned on his aft camera so that we could keep an eye on that slippery little dinghy during the rest of trip.

                                                    Grabbers!

We were the last ones in to the docks at Orchid Bay Marina in Settlement Harbour, Great Guana Cay, and the winds out of the southwest had piped up well over 20 knots.  Fortunately everyone got into their slips okay, so we decided to hike on up to Nipper's Beach Bar for some refreshments.  After scaling the sandy hill, we were not pleased to find out that Nipper's is closed on Tuesdays!  Oh well, we took a few pics of the gorgeous beach and wandered back down the hill, hoping to find a better situation at Grabbers on Fisher's Bay.

Grabbers was indeed hopping and we had a great lunch washed down with several of the very strong "Guana Grabbers" rum punches.  It was a fairly relaxing afternoon as some hung at Grabbers, while others went back to the boats to do chores or nap.

                            The view over my computer as I type this blog

As I finish this blog post, I am hearing chatter on the radio about dinner - which I think most of us are just going to have aboard tonight.  But there is also talk of walking back to Grabbers for a little bit after dinner.  After all, this is one of our last nights in the Abacos and we need to make the most of it.  Tomorrow morning, we will be heading back to our anchorage at Great Sale Cay.  It will be a pretty long day and from there, Thursday's cruise will take us all the way to Old Bahama Bay Resort at the west end of Grand Bahama island.  There we will do our farewell dinner as, weather-permitting, Friday morning we all head back across the Gulfstream to the good old USA.  So I will sign off for now and head back to get some dinner - and check to make sure the dinghy is still tied to Mother Ocean!