Joost Van Dyke - White Bay 18:26.48N 64:45.62W
Pacific Bliss
Colin Price
Tue 26 Jan 2010 19:36
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Joost Van Dyke - White Bay at
night
What a night. So much promise from such a beautiful bay which is the home of the 'painkiller' ( a cocktail of rum, pinapple juice, coconut, nutmeg, and some secret ingredients). We had two deck chairs on the beach at sunset with our toes in the water sipping our drinks when Colin said, "This is what I thought the Caribbean was going to be like".   We had anchored in 4m on sand with probably slightly too
little chain out. After dark the wind got up a bit and the swell started
to build breaking on the reef. Colin started an anchor watch, and we would
rather have left. Trouble was there was no way out of the bay at night as the
reef channel was unlit, and narrow. Then things started to
happen.
We dragged a bit before holding properly, this put us between
two boats, one of which was a motor catamaran which did not lie like a sailboat,
so we ended up too close on many occasions.
At 1am a large Dutch sailing boat dragged its anchor and
was blown over the reef which took about half an hour of high drama. The
pictures don't do it justice, but gives you an idea. Really horrid to
watch. A Brit in a dinghy went to help, but couldn't do much. The
lady on the boat was heard to shout, just after the photos taken below,
"Paul, I want to get off the boat". The rest of the night they could not
get into the bay proper as they had no engine.
   A crazy American, thought he'd run for it, and careened around
the bay before giving up and going back to his original mooring in a really
rolly place.
Another crazy American dragged and seemed to love going
backwards and forewards along the reef before eventually being pointed to a
buoy. One painkiller too many perhaps
By dawn we were exhausted and just got out as quickly as
possible and headed up the coast to Little Harbour and took a buoy for the
day.
All this and later on we find that White Bay is notoriously dangerous at night which is NOT mentioned in the pilot books.  |