15 nautical miles

We got all packed up and ready to go back to the boat this morning. Uncle Ian came to pick us up in the dinghy around 9 am. It was crowded so we had to make two trips. Then we got underway for Hope Town so Uncle Ian and Aunt Caroline could get their 5-day covid tests by 3 pm. They were also going to leave us :( and go to stay at the Abaco Inn. We had a rolly trip and were grateful when we started to pull in the southern entrance to Hope Town. We weren't sure if the depths would be good but there were more soundings than the northern channel. We didn't like that it was a falling tide, but you can't have perfect conditions all the time!

At first, it seemed like we had good depths, but then we bumped over a sandbar and went much more cautiously. Then we got grounded again about a minute later. We hit pretty hard, and couldn't get off with just reverse. So we tried all moving to one side to lean the boat and hopefully free keel. That also didn't work. So we started feverishly working to get the boat off. We tried connecting a halyard to the dinghy to heel the boat from the mast. That didn't work so dad dove down to see how stuck we were. This was when we realized just how strong the current was that was pushing us into the bar -- we had about 2 knots of current ripping through there! Then we tried pulling the stern and bow with the dinghy. As you can probably guess by now, that didn't work. So we switched to setting our spare anchor with the dinghy and wenching the stern in, first electrically then manually once the circuit got overloaded and popped the breaker. It was hard to wench it in! I would take turns with my dad and it was one of the most tiring things I've ever done. We tried using the engine again and even had the dinghy crew (Aunt Caroline, Uncle Ian, Cyrus, and Mom) hang on the spinnaker swing that Clarke rigged, again trying to heel the boat. Nothing was working. Then a motorboat came by and stopped to try to help us. They tried really hard to get us off and were super nice. But yet again, we couldn't get off. By now the bow was coming out of the water, so we initiated our evacuation plan. Dad would stay on the boat until high tide (midnight) then get off and anchor by the entrance to the southern channel. The rest of us would dinghy into land and spend the night at the Abaco Inn. But first, we needed to get the spare anchor up. So dad and I went in the dinghy to get it up. Turns out it was about 4ft from a high voltage power cable connecting the islands! We drove forward to release it farther from the cable. It kicked up and just when we thought things couldn't get worse, they did. The anchor hit the motor and completely broke off one of our two propellers. We still had a one-mile dinghy ride to get to Elbow Cay, and not even come back! But we slowly hobbled back to the boat and started loading our bags cause, well, it was our only choice. As we were loading the boat heeled over on the keel. So we started moving faster. Once everything was loaded we said goodbye to dad. He asked me to stay with him at the last minute, so I did.

Just as the dinghy was pushing off a motorboat came up asking if we needed any help. They were working on a nearby house and offered to run us to the Inn and come stay at their house while the boat was stuck. I ended up going on the boat because I could just go out to the boat at high tide since we would be so close. They really saved us! The dinghy ride probably would have been an hour, just to the very end of Tahiti beach. After saying a quick goodbye to Aunt Caroline and Uncle Ian we went to their house.

The workers were really nice. They gave Clarke and Cyrus fishing rods and fished with them all afternoon. We also chatted a lot. We were very glad to be so close to the boat and yet not be on it. Around sunset, dad paddled to the house. He said That the boat was doing fine, but that it was really weird being heeled over 30 degrees without moving! They offered to make us dinner, so we stayed. Around 9 pm they brought us back to the boat. We were incredibly thankful for their generosity and hospitality and made sure they knew to call us if they were ever in Virginia.

We got off a lot earlier than we thought, around 9:30 pm. Then we cautiously made our way out to the anchorage at the entrance to the channel. It feels so good to be floating with our keel feet above the ground!