Having eaten an early lunch at Carenero we left the lagoon on the batteries and set sail. We shook out the first reef as the wind had dropped to nearer 15 knots. We had to jibe a couple of times as our destination was almost dead down wind. The timing of our jibes was forces on us by approaching reefs. We entered the shallows north of Cayo de Agua from the west side furling our headsail as we turned into the wind. During this final mile, due to some inattentiveness, we managed to scrape a coral head. I was very displeased with ourselves for this mistake. We had enough clues to have been giving the level of vigilance required to avoid this but we weren’t. Another lesson learned. More nice new paint removed from our keel (fortunately not much and no damage to the boat). Having struck the coral head it was full attention, head north out of the shallows we were in, drop the main and make it safely to anchor.
We did not go ashore or go for a swim in the afternoon knowing that we intended to stay here for a couple of days. The land is a little different than the other cays in that it is not entirely flat. It also has a little cluster of palm trees plus another wind swept palm all on it’s own. Cayo de Agua get it’s name from the fact that fresh (or only slightly brackish) water can be found by digging down. It was used in the past as a fresh water source by the Amerindians who frequented these islands.
In the evening we had dinner followed by an hour of watching a show on the computer. While watching the show we heard a manual signal horn being blown by someone on one of the four nearby boats. As it was dark I had to use my binoculars to see what was happening. I could see a woman blowing the horn in our direction. A signal horn at night is a sign of distress. I tried hailing them on the VHF but received no response. We therefore lowered the dinghy and with headlamp and hand held VHF in hand I dinghied over to offer assistance.
It turned out it was a bunch of Frenchies having a party and the woman was blowing the signal horn for fun. They were polite enough to thank me for coming to their assistance but I made the point that blowing the horn should only be used for distress purposes only. I headed back to Helen cross that people think it could be fun to blow horns in a quiet anchorage and can be so oblivious to the cost of using distress signals frivolously. Given my two recent experiences with French boats I could see why Britain has the better naval history (forgetting at that moment our own errors of the day)
This morning we plan to explore ashore taking our face masks and snorkels in case we see anywhere interesting in the water.
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