Best Canada day ever in Orient Bay – 1 July

so today started even earlier, somehow we both found our selves up at 6am. aimee wanted to go around the corner to orient bay for the “sunset beach bar” 20th anniversary party. it was 10nm of bashing into the wind but at 6am it seemed pretty calm so i agreed. no sooner had we got out of the anchorage than the wind started to really kick up. i was up at 2800 rpm with the turbo kicked in doing sub 5 kts. as we continued around the point i started to worry about running out of fuel. we still had 10 gal in the jerry jugs so i was not too worried but i stayed off shore enough “just in case” as luck would have it just as i mentioned to aimee we might run out of fuel the engine sputtered and died. we had 20 kts no the beam at this point pushing us towards shore but fortunately we where able to just sail with the hull on autopilot for the 5 minutes while we siphoned the two jerry jugs in. i even swapped filters to make sure that was not the problem.

it was only a few minutes after we recovered from this as i turned into the bay that the dingy painter snapped. fun fun. amazingly aimee was still having a blast and volunteered to go swim for the dingy. had a been a bit less hungover i would have vetoed this but it seemed like a good plan at the time. in the end aimee got a good workout swimming with a large line while i maneuvered palapa to grab the dingy at the stern step. note to self do not turn a dingy overboard situation into a man overboard situation no matter how good your rescue swimmer is! and this was all before 9am!

anchoring was very anti climatic after all this even though we dropped in 9 feet of water in the lee of a big reef. we got ourselves together as quickly as possible and headed to shore for bfast at our favorite beach bar and Caesars for canada day. the place is very cool, run by an ex marine and his wife with US, USMC and POW flags all in the heart of “france” the menu is complete with freedom fries etc. we split the chili omelet and i was full for the rest of the day!

the next stop was the nude beach next store. in fact we had landed the dingy on the nude part so we dropped our cloths of at the dingy and headed down the beach. there was pretty good talent for a nude beach but after awhile we decided to head down to bikini beach to check out the “festivities”. the other part of the beach was part of france so it was topless as well (see the photo aimee took). we where, of course, too early for the event as they where still setting up so we headed back for happy hour at the nude beach bar called “perch”.  aimee got chatted up by one of the hotter naked chicks we had seen at breakfast who was from Virginia.  there was a long line but eventually it settled down and aimee got us some 2 for 1  rum and cokes.

by this point it was time for a nap so we headed back to palapa.  actually i took a nap and aimee made soup!   amazingly we got up just before sunset and headed back in.   we ended up being stars of the dance floor dancing the night (or most of it) away. “the best canada day ever” aimee said as we declared victory and headed back to the dingy but then it seem that “best day ever” is a trend on palapa!

cheers roger