After a calm night moored in Little Harbor, we took a lazy morning making breakfast and not rushing things. The plan that day was to head to Sandy Cay for a few hours for lunch, before heading back to Soper’s Hole to get the boats checked in so we could leave early the next morning. We’d be sleeping onboard the boats that night, but docked up securely in the marina.

I wasn’t feeling well when I woke up that morning. Physically I was fine–I was just a bit emotionally overwhelmed. I’d been running things all week, and I suppose eventually I had to let some of the stress out, so with the support of one of my crew I had a good quiet cry for a few minutes. I’d been affected more by my scare the previous day than I’d realized! It didn’t take too long though before I felt better and was able to join my crew in eating breakfast burritos.

Motoring over to Sandy Cay was quick and uneventful–it’s only a short way away from Little Harbor. However, when we got there, we realized that Holoholo had grabbed the last mooring ball. It’s a popular place, which shouldn’t be surprising considering how damn beautiful it is:

Instead, we had to anchor. It took me three tries to get it right: there wasn’t a lot of space in which I could anchor, and the anchor didn’t set the first two times. The third time though, it held, and I was a comfortable distance away from any other boats (the nearest was Holoholo).

As it was the last day, I had one of my crew (who wanted practice driving a dinghy anyway!) give me a ride around Freedom Seeker and Holoholo so that I could get pictures of both boats:

We relaxed, snorkeled, enjoyed the sunshine, and had lunch over the next few hours, before heading south toward Soper’s Hole.

Coming in, I raised Voyage Yachts, our charter company, over the VHF, let them know we’d be coming in, and they told me to dock at the fuel dock. I pulled up slowly and smoothly, not wanting to embarrass myself in front of an employee of the charter company by botching the docking attempt. I didn’t need to worry, though; we docked without issue, and I no longer needed to worry about any of it.

All that remained to do that afternoon was to get our boats checked out and to arrange a taxi for the morning, to give us all a ride to the ferry dock. I had a short list of problems with Freedom Seeker to give to Voyage during checkout, but it was all minor stuff: a missing screw on the hydraulic arm on one of the freezers, the issue of the line for reef #1 being too short to use effectively, and a few other small things.

Once Charles and I had taken care of checkouts (or, rather, while we were doing it), both crews gathered all the remaining booze and snacks onto Holoholo and got to work polishing everything off.

I won’t write about the rest of the evening: it was given entirely to relaxation, conversation, and an early bedtime for all of us. We left early the next morning, and spent the rest of the next day traveling.

I love the Caribbean, and can’t wait to go back.