February 20, 2009.

We’ve been fairly busy since last I wrote. We spent 2 nights in the beautiful desolation that is Pipe Creek. Desolation is probably not the right word for Pipe Creek. The marina at Compass Cay lies a mile or so to the north and the large private island estate of Little Pipe Cay lies to the west.

What makes me think of desolation is the fact that very few boats stop in at Pipe Creek. The various entrances look fairly daunting on the charts with random rocks, reefs and sand bars scattered about. We’ve explored a lot of the area in our dinghy with our portable depth sounder and have found deep water in several spots where the charts claimed there was none. But then again, we've run aground in the dinghy when we were supposedly in 10 feet of water so the area can be a bit dicey.

We spent one afternoon snorkeling and hunting but came away empty. We did see several small grouper and a tiny lobster but left them all to grow for another day.

During the evening we watched as a passing dinghy sputtered and died. The tide was starting to ebb and it was getting dark. They were able to restart their engine and slowly idled their way over to us. It seems that they had run out of gasoline. We gave them a gallon of gas to get them on their way. They couldn’t have been more thankful and agreed to call us when they got back to their boat so we knew they were safe.

It was by random chance that we decided to come to Pipe Creek and if we hadn’t had been there it was a very good chance that their evening would have really sucked.