Barra de Navidad (December 18)

Me and Dan on Che Bella (thanks Larry and Sherry for the picture!)

As we sailed toward the bay enclosing Barra de Navidad, I remembered back to February of this year, when I was sitting on the beach of this bay, looking out at the sailboats going by. I thought, “I really want to be on one of those boats.” And a little less than a year later, I was wearing a big grin as that dream was realized.

View from the beach in Melaque

The entrance to the channel was a little bouncy, as the depth decreased dramatically there.

As we approached the marina, we were scanning for the right dock, when we realized that we didn't have dock lines or fenders ready. After anchoring for two weeks, we had kind of forgotten about those things. I suggested we do a 360 turn to give us some time to get ready. We did one, and were doing another when Dan asked me to take the wheel. I noticed it wasn't coming around into the wind very well, and that the depth was getting shallow... too shallow. By the time I thought to throw it into reverse, it was too late. We'd run aground and were stuck in the sand. Fortunately, we didn't have to do a messy kedging off maneuver with the anchor. Dan called someone he knew anchored in the lagoon, and they came in their dingy to push our bow around, and we were able to back out then.

I'd never ran aground before, and if it had been earlier in the trip I would have been mortified. But Dan didn't give me a hard time about it at all. In fact, he had mentioned a couple days before that I'd been coming up with a lot of good ideas, and was generally right. Running aground, he said, was just proof to him that I wasn't superwoman. Which is a pretty nice thing to say to someone who just got your boat stuck on a sandbar with a falling tide.

Anyway... the last half mile was a doozy, but the accomodations at the Marina attached to the Grand Bay Hotel made up for it. A beautiful place, with lush grounds, several pools, and hammocks on the beach, it was a comfortable end to a long trip.