Expect the unexpected

One of the things that I have learned while sailing the waters, is that there is never a moment of letting down the guard and being too complacent of everything 'just being fine'.

There always has to be something done on the boat whether if it is broken (even if you are renting it and not even owning a boat, that would makes it a lot more priority always), or you have to preventively do something, or even if there is a window of opportunity in the weather which means that is the moment to prepare some food.... Because you know...That opportunity might be gone later and that means you have to cook at a 17 degree angle which is not the most flashy thing to do if you prefer to not have your food flying around.

And that also means that when you have a plan on something, it is best to always have a back up plan, and even a back up of a back up plan for when everything changes and your original idea turns out to suck in no time.

Plan B

But...also because of that you have to be open to any potential turn that the situation might make, that is also the moment where you end up in the most cool spots around.

I know what you are thinking when you are seeing these views of perfect sunsets over the water with hardly any other boats around. 'That looks idyllic, wowwww, this is the place what I would want to visit'

The reality of this spot was that this was a plan B spot because the original plan did not work out. And getting it not to work out, maybe that is the most courageous thing to realize that it is just a better idea to go for the plan B, in stead of making multiple attemps.

See the original attempt was to anchor in a sheltered bay and swim some lines towards the rocks and tie up the back side of the boat. That means the front side would be secured by the anchor, and the back side would be secured by the lines tied to the rocks.

But from what started is that the bay turned out to not to be so sheltered at all. The winds had turned and all of a sudden this bay had turned into some raging waters with the winds howling across the bay, which was not predicted at all.

Apart from that, it was also that the spots which were still accessible, they turned out to be too deep for the amount of anchor chain in combination with the heavier winds.

Better said, that bay was not the place to sleep for us and we needed a new and better plan.

The calmness

So immediately after we decided that this was not the place to sleep for us, it meant that we needed a new location. It also meant that all the anchor spots on the same side of the island were also not accessible because of the same winds, and we needed to cross over some water to get some shelter from land again.

And that was just the best idea ever. Because by now the sun was starting to lower in a rapid pace, and by new I was also getting a bit grumpy because food which meant I started nibbling on some nuts and stuff to get some energy to make decent decisions with the brain again.

The bay across which was the new point we were heading to turned out to be like this calm place of utter tranquility. We were the second boat to anchor here, and after us just 1 other boat came to also spend the night here.

It was silent, we cooked some food, there was no cell reception of any kind. Just some weird clouds forming in the sky making shapes with the moonlight as backdrop.

I had never thought that plan B would be so much better than the original plan because this turned out to be paradise.

At night all of a sudden I heard a lot of water movement around the boat. A school of sardines was passing and a bunch of them accidentally jumped into the dinghy and weren't able to get out anymore.

They ended up in all of the cracks and folds and I needed to used this wooden spoon to get all of them out. (and yes, a day later it turned out that I didn't get all of them out properly as I was able to smell later on. YUK!

But come on... a perfect bay with moonlight and a school of sardines passing by at random? That unexpected was just perfect. I will take plan B any given day!