Day 2

Since this was our first time chartering, I didn't exactly know how the checkout process was supposed to work. The boys and I were up early and took a quick walk to the RiteWay for some breakfast and snack items. When the base office opened, I stopped in to confess my newness and ask if there was anything they needed from us. I was reassured that we were fine and told to just hang out on the boat. When they were done checking boats back in, they would be over to check us out. If our provisions hadn't arrived by the time we were ready to leave, they would help us with a call to RiteWay. At about 10:00am, we were called in for our chart briefing. Shortly afterwards a gentleman showed up at our boat for the check out. He walked DH through the process of checking the engine and generators. We discovered that the generator would start but not keep running. An engineer was called for and the diagnostics began. An hour and 3 replacement parts later, the generator was fixed. We never had a problem with it for the rest of the week.

We were nervous about navigating a strange boat off the docks so we were relieved to learn that at Conch, they drive you out into the harbor and then leave you with the boat. I would say we were left on our own by about 12:30pm. Not bad timing from what I can tell from reading this forum.

And just like that, we were sailing a 44 foot catamaran for the first time! Our destination for this day was an easy crossing over to Norman to spend the night in The Bight. We cleared the harbor and then started raising the sails. After getting the hang of the auto winch and maneuvering the main through the lazy jacks (we don't have lazy jacks on our home boat) we unfurled the jib and had a smooth sail to Norman. Soon enough it was time to take the sails down which we did without incident. The next challenge was picking up a mooring. Our home boat lives on a mooring so we had the general idea. We just didn't know how it was going to all work out with tying off to two hulls, etc. That and general nervousness about being the entertainment for the anchorage. For this first round, DH drove the boat and my younger son and I worked the lines. We actually managed to get tied off with a minimum of fuss.

Now, a day and a half later, it was finally time to officially RELAX. DH and I toasted to actually making it this far and on schedule too. There's been talk of full anchorages recently so I'll note that The Bight was FULL this night. We could see the Willy T in the distance and it was packed. Since we had the kids with us, we did not visit. (We had been there before on a day trip.) We took the dinghy over to the caves for a very nice snorkel.

We had failed to make dinner reservations that night so were turned away from Pirates Bight. We went next door and they were able to take us in. The food was very good but the plates are small...order accordingly.

We made it back to our boat for a night cap and then, after such a full day, we called it a night.

That's it for Day 2.