D[rift].I.P. Cari

Alright, so this isn't exactly NEW news, but it's a pretty funny story nonetheless. Funny now because we can look back at it after the passage of time and laugh... isn't that how it goes?!

So, picture this. It's Paul's 30th birthday weekend celebration, beautiful weather, gorgeous winds; it's sailing weather! We've grouped our three personal days together and taken a 5-day holiday from work (yahoo!). The plan is to sail first to Anse Marcel, stay overnight, then sail on to Tintamarre the next morning, a beautiful separate island that is part of the French nature preserve. 100% guaranteed to swim with turtles. That's the place we want to be!

So there we were, Monday, February 22nd, Paul's 30th birthday, sailing away from Simpson Bay Lagoon. The waves were no joke, and the swell was contributing to that slight uncomfortability, but our Bavaria was pushing through... a bit slower than usual to be honest, given the overall wind speed and gusts. We had just completed a tack, and were well on our way to Anse Marcel, slowly but surely (SOG speed of 3.0 knots when we are usually crushing 5.0-6.0 knots). We commented that a good hull cleaning (this lovely process of scraping all the algae and barnacles and little ocean bitties off the bottom of the boat) was in order to reduce our drag in the water and speed up our little cruiser.

Cue: the (loving) resentment of our dinghy. If a boat is like a home, a dinghy is basically the equivalent of your car. You really can't do without it, unless you are constantly docked in a marina. A dinghy is therefore a key part of equipment; it is extremely important. Our little dinghy had seen many years and a lot of love in its life. It definitely had its quirks; like the one section that constantly deflated, the plug that needed to be set in a certain way so as to not drench the dinghy, and the makeshift fender on the front of the dinghy to keep it from colliding into the stern while under sail. It got so that I made Paul a "fall in love again with our dinghy" Christmas themed present. Our dinghy got a LOT of grief from us, but also never let us down. 'Twas a good dinghy.

It's important now in the story to note that we always towed our dinghy behind the boat while sailing. Some sailors will frown upon this habit, as those who tow their dinghy really are asking for trouble. The trouble is, our boat has an extra forestay on the bow of the boat, making the process of putting the dinghy ON the boat while sailing a bit tricky. If the dinghy is on the bow, it completely covers our anchor locker, which poses some inconvenience when it's time to drop anchor once having arrived at our destination. So, we towed our faithful dinghy behind the stern with the (almost) never-failing butterfly knot.

So, after talking about bottom cleaning, drag, and so on, yadda yadda, I went to make a wise-crack about good old Cari (our nickname for the Caribe model) and how she is always 'such a drag' (har har). I looked behind, and... no Cari. No rope. Nada. Zilch. Squat. Now there were quite a few expletives uttered (yelled) that do not need to be repeated here, but needless to say Paul and I were quite upset! It had seemed that Cari finally tired of her mistreatment and released herself to the waves and Poseidon himself.

We acted quickly. Motor on, time to jibe, and away we went. Remember those waves I mentioned earlier in the story? Yeah, those bad boys made it near impossible to distinguish between a white cap and a little dinghy drifting away through the binoculars. We searched for almost two hours, but to no avail. We were moving about 4.5 knots, and Cari must've been making 14-16 knots on the current easily. Silver lining: we did see breaching humpback whales! Downside: we wouldn't of seen these humpback whales had our dinghy not detached itself.

UGGGHHHHH. We had become the sailors that other sailors warned us about! And shame on us for not using a key element in other sports we engage in: redundancy. We had only one rope attaching the dinghy to the boat, and away it went. Totally our fault. All things considered, we were in pretty jolly spirits (we had been meaning to sell the dinghy and upgrade; this circumstance took one aspect out of that plan and fast-forwarded the other). Ah well, c'est la vie. We sailed on back to Simpson Bay and anchored in a beautiful sunset.

Have we learned our lesson? Possibly. We still tow our new (to us) dinghy, a 2019 Highfield that the sweetest Finnish couple sold us second-hand (I think they pitied us because they gave us quite the deal). However, now we have multiple ropes attached to the dinghy, tied off at some of the largest cleats on our stern. Fingers crossed we don't repeat the same mistakes. Doing the same thing, and expecting different results... insanity, right?!

So, drift in peace, dear Cari. We do miss you and wish you happy winds!

Signing off for now!

Toni

P.S. Special thanks to Santi for this treasure: