Laundry Day and Karma Overboard

Back at Gaulin we spend our time between snorkeling and lobstering . We learn what we can from those around us, are really starting to feel like we’re settling in here to the lifestyle.

Ian continues to be a great mentor and neighbor, and we somehow get an invite to go out with he and one of his kiting buddies for a day of lobstering. We aren’t exactly ones to turn down an invitation, especially if it means being in the water and possibly bringing some more lobster home, so we climb aboard and go along for the ride. His “dinghy” turns out to be a speed boat, which means there’s no problem in jetting way further south than we have been in the big boat, even just in search of lobster. Great tour of the next few islands (a precursor of things to come), and between us we end up with 17 lobster on the boat today!

Thats 6 just for us to take back to our boat, and no question its the first time we’ve had the freezer full since leaving FL!
Over the next few days we headed out in our own dinghy to search for lobster and fish and its rare that we even come back to the boat without dinner. It’s pretty amazing to combine one of our biggest passions (snorkeling) with being able to catch/clean our own meals. Simply terrific!

We haven’t done laundry since we were back at Nassau and only did a single “emergency” load then… so to say we’re getting “low” would be a bit of an understatement. Don’t get me wrong… all we ever wear is swimsuits and bikinis, but its still nice to have a clean set of towels and sheets from time to time!

For the last few weeks we kept hearing from different sources about Black Point, how its a great anchorage and the highlight is the laundromat. We actually kind of thought that was a joke the first time… but the larger our laundry needs get and the more research we do… the better it starts to sound!

We once again pulled up anchor, made our way south to black point and picked a spot to drop anchor. We did our typical procedure… (so awesome these things are starting to feel more routine now), found a spot we felt good about, dropped anchor, backed down on it to make sure it held well, dove the anchor to get a visual confirmation and then waited a few hours to make sure. After that, we loaded all our laundry into the dinghy and went ashore to see what all the fuss was about.

Long story short…this place was NOT oversold. Despite being in a string of remote islands that seem to struggle to source/maintain anything…this is probably the nicest and best outfitted laundry we’ve ever been to… and the view was to die for! I mean, if you have to do laundry, why not do laundry in a picturesque bay and wait on a lovely deck overlooking your anchored boat??

Nature also didn’t disappoint… as we were anchored here we had our second “supermoon” in two months time, but this one happened to coordinate a spectacular moonset at the exact same time as sunrise! Pretty sure that’s nothing we’ve ever seen in our lives, and the ability to watch it (and the reflections it cast off) from our boat was a special moment for sure.

Given the amount of time we spend these days watching the sun and moon cycles and staring at the sky and stars hopefully more will follow… but we aren’t likely to forget this one.

The following day we headed just south around the point to Little Bay, which had no other boats and we far preferred for the privacy… but it also turned out to be quite rolly. Can’t even imagine having been here as a monohull as even the cat was rolling side to side pretty bad. At one point karma got up to go out back and pee, and we both heard this odd splash and our brains sprung on to high alert. I paused, heard nothing and then leapt up the stairs to see if I had made it up. Maybe it was just a wave hitting the boat in a weird manner, maybe… I don’t know - I looked around for Jen who was already looking at the back of the boat, oh, good… all’s fine I thought.

I turn to head back down to our berth and immediatley hear Jen shout “She’s IN!”
We both bolt to the back of the boat and see the Karma swimming back and forth between the hulls trying to figure our what to do. I immediately dive overboard and try to hold her above water (she may still have webbed feet, but she doesn’t seem to float as well as she used to).

Jen is in action digging out the DFD (doggie flotation device) and tosses it in to me. I slide it over her head and work to try and fasten the buckles beneath her while she’s still frantically swimming behind the boat. I eventually seat the buckles and lift from below as Jen pulls her aboard with the handle on the DFD.

Crisis averted and after the adrenaline (all 3 of us, no doubt) we talk and laugh about the whole thing. Luckily…despite the fact we never actually expected this to happen, it is something we had discussed in terms of “what if?” or “worst case scenarios”…which in this case worked really well because we knew without talking exactly what our roles were and what to do if the impossible should happen.

Guess we’ll think twice about that role anchorage next time! ;)