Once we were all legal it was straight to downtown Isla Mujeres to further our search for the perfect shrimp coctail. We were not disappointed. Miguel at the marina pointed us in the direction of Picus Coctaileria where we toasted to friendship and adventure over seafood coctail and chiladas (beer mixed with chile and lime). Happy!
Tuesday after a little breakfast and boat tinkering (cockpit stereo speaker installation- woohoo!) we went in for a more detailed scout of the island. Travis, Joanne and Scott found the jackpot of beach bars - two large mahogany bars with swings and hammocs instead of bar stools overlooking the white sand beach which streched to the gorgeous turqouise ocean. Wow! As nice as this spot was, Jeremy and I could not sit still until we knew the layout of town. We walked for hours up and down the little downtown streets finding, in order of importance, the local liquor store, spanish school and grocery. A success! Now we were desperately ready for that fruity drink on the beach! Aaahhhh. Another day in paradise!
ANOTHER NIGHT IN PARADISE
Tuesday night wasn't quite so pleasant. We went to bed with a nice good day buzz and woke up around 1am to the sound of wind and waves as the windspeed slowly increased from the south. There was no need for alarm at first with the winds up at about 25 knots and we simply checked our anchor and then sat in the cockpit, waiting for what was next and watching our neighbors on the boats all around us wake and climb to their cockpits to monitor the weather as well. Before we knew it the wind piped up to 40 knots and all around we began to see tiny anchor lights drifting about as boats began to drag their anchors. Jeremy, Scott and I watched in alarm as lightening and heavier winds began to move in on our tiny anchorage. Suddenly a huge gust of wind hit us and our jib sail tore from it's furling at the exact same second as our neighbor's anchor lost it's grounding. With the jib out our boat began to sail, dragging our own anchor with it, bringing our boat closer and closer to our other neighbor to the north, Cop Out.
Jeremy and Scott went to work immediatly refurling the jib while I stood by the helm in case we continued to drag. Fortunatly our 35 lb. Delta anchor re-set itself (thanks again, Larry). This 52 knot gust (that's about 60 mph) was luckily the worst of the gale and the winds began to slowly subside by about 3:30 am. We were up for a couple more hours putting the boat back together and hauling Jeremy up the jib to untangle the jib sheets so that we could re-furl it correctly. It was a miracle that it was not damaged, though about a year's worth of wear had been put on it in just a couple of hours. Once everything was tidy again we all sat down with a glass of bourbon and talked about the lessons we learned from this gale that came without warning in the middle of the night. We toasted to our good fortune that we were able to learn these lessons without damage to any person or vessel in the anchorage. We went to bed around 6am, a little shook up, but safe and sound. ... I'll fill in more with Thursday's excursions and pictures soon!!
