He showed up a few minutes later. We explored charts. I learned that his diesel engine was inoperative, as in it had sucked a fuel filter. Not good, but he’d been sailing without the engine for a while and wasn’t too concerned. I suggested that it would be pretty hard to get to the DR from here without an engine since he was going into the prevailing wind, but he just grinned and said he would tack a lot. During all of this a dolphin showed up alongside the boat. Coleen so wanted to swim with it, but just didn’t quite get her suit and snorkel gear on before he swam away.
We enjoyed our homemade cinnamon rolls, then quickly changed into our Sunday best (which isn’t that nice) and dinghied to town for a quick walk to the historic St. Andrews Church. It’s a lovely white building with stained glass windows perched high upon a hill overlooking town and the harbor. We barely made it inside before another deluge started. St. Andrews is an Anglican Church and as this was our first time we didn’t know what to expect. The congregation was a mixture of races, and people of all ages. Amazing music, a great sermon, but a lot of liturgy and waving around of something that let out some kind of smoke. We’re not sure what that was about. The service lasted 2 hours and 15 minutes! Super nice people, everyone was friendly and we even saw someone we knew – Lee who owns/runs the local laundry.
We rushed back to the boat and hauled anchor as we had another engagement on the other side of the harbor. The brave/crazy cruisers who are here during hurricane season have a get together at the Chat n Chill beach bar at 2 p.m. It was raining like crazy when I went forward to set the anchor, and while we rode the dinghy to shore, but I figured we had planned to get wet swimming anyway so what did it matter. We spent a lovely afternoon in the Chat n Chill enjoying a cheeseburger in our soggy paradise while it rained and rained.
I met Mark, a retired marine science professor (Harvard) who lives on a boat. He’s an interesting fellow, and gave me such a brain dump on the local culture, education, history, etc. my brain was spinning. Then I met another couple who came here 10 years ago in their catamaran, and like it so much they decided to stay. They were really interesting folks who also had a bunch of local knowledge and funny stories.