Juno 423: Rudder Cay - a mermaid and low tide woes

We headed out through the cut to the sound at 8am sailing southeast. The wind was up to 18 knots, with 5'-7' seas and we were close hauled. We had our sails reefed so it was comfortable enough but no reason to work too hard, so we cut our sail short turning in to Rudder Cay instead of Lee Stocking Cay. Great decision as it was a beautiful spot. We met a couple shortly after arriving who invited us to join them for sunset cocktails. It was still early so we headed out to explore some caves and snorkeled the "piano and mermaid" - a sculpture that David Copperfield had placed in 15' of water.

About 4:30 pm we noticed the outgoing tide was lower than we had expected and Juno was in shallower water than the 5' 7" draft that she requires to keep afloat. Juno bumped on the sandy bottom a few times but as it was almost dead low tide, we couldn't retrieve the anchor which was in even shallower water, so we left Juno and went to meet the other boaters and enjoy cocktails. As it turned out, our host's boat was also bumping on the soft sand and without any worries, we all enjoyed cocktails and the sunset. Later, about 1 am, we were awoken by waves rocking Juno. Since it was just after high tide, this provided us ample depth to re-anchor Juno to deeper waters so that we wouldn't be woken by the bumps at the next low tide around 5 am which is what we did and we both slept peacefully the rest of the night without any more bumps.