The Pigs around Staniel Cay

The maiden voyage of the pram we built

I know it's way past time for a new post

I cannot believe how quickly time has passed.  We have had a great time here in the Bahamas and are already talking about heading back.  I really do have a good excuse for not posting more- internet connections have been abysmal.  Arthur has been able to update his blog because sailblog has great compression software and he can transmit on very low band and also on his sat phone.  His site is svmorningglory.com 

We have met some really great friends and have traveled to some really beautiful places.  Some quick highlights since my last posts are:

Georgetown- arriving just in time for the Family Island Regatta where the local race in their hand crafted sailboats.  The children got to participate in the children's regatta.  Georgetown is where we met some really great people like Kylie, Stuart and Sammy on s/v Clementine, and the Shewowow guru Simon and his wife Andrea and children Esther and Stephen's new best friend Damien on Nathanael.  We also met Scott and Esme and their children Haley and Alana on Las Sirenas.  I also can't forget Liberty, Side by Side, and Asolaires (which I know I spelled wrong) and many other people I am sure I'll run into again.

The Exumas-  What beautiful pristine islands.  Just make sure you stock up before arriving because there is nothing there in the way of provisions. We went to Rudder Cay, Staniel Cay where we met up again with Natanael and Las Sirenas.  There we saw swimming pigs and the famous Thunderball grotto from the James bond movie. We also went to Cambridge Cay, Wardwick Wells and Hawksbill Cay.  At Hawksbills we had our final shewowwow  in the Shewowwow Grotto and said goodbye to our good friends on Natanael. Our last day in the Exumas was at Shroud Cay at the most spectacular beach I have ever seen. I can't believe I forgot my camera.  I will try to get some photos from friends to post.

Rivers birthday party

Now we are experiencing culture shock at the Atlantis resort off Nassau.  I'll take pictures of our view and post them tomorrow.

Starting to get on island time

It's starting to feel like we are finally in the Bahamas.  We sailed to Great Guana Cay on Wednesday and spent 2 nights there. We had a lovely walk to the other side of the island where there is a magnificent 5 mile beach.  The colors were breath taking!  There is a huge barrier reef that protects the beach.  It's the third largest barrier reef in the world.  There is an inner reef which we snorkeled. 
It had beautiful corals and sea fans.  There were big crevices and caves for fish to hide in.  There was not a ton of fish, but we saw a nice variety including a huge lobster.  Too bad lobster season ended a week or so ago.   We forgot our camera so Arthur and I hiked back this morning while the kids slept in then ate their breakfast.  They are so cute calling us on the VHF when they get up.  The pictures that we took do not do justice to the color of the water.

A big cold front is coming down from Canada and bringing strong winds and rain late tonight.  We ducked into Hope Town to wait out the weather.   It's a very quaint little hole in the island that is absolutely packed with boats.  Around the lagoon are cute little cottages painted bright colors.  We haven't had time to explore the island yet.  When we arrived we were visited by another cruising boat with 2 children.  Charlotte Ann has 2 lovely children aboard, Dylani age 9 and Mitchell age 7.  Rivers was thrilled to play with a girl her age and Stephen enjoyed playing with the little boy.

What's for dinner?


Mahi Mahi are so colorful

Yum

Leaving Beaufort 3/30/10

                               Are we there yet?

Finally Moving, Finally Bahamas

Well we finally left North Carolina!!!  It's about time.  We had a great weather window open for us on Tuesday, March 30, so we decided not to mess around down the coast but to cross the Gulf stream North  out of Beaufort and head South once we crossed it. Winds were predicted to be light and from the right directions.  Well they got the right directions part right but the wind was a little stiffer than we would have liked.  We flew across the Gulf Stream with a third reef in both sails and and faces full of salt water.  The first 2 days were tough and poor little Rivers got very sick.  Then it finally calmed down and we started to get accustomed to our 4 hour watch schedule.  We even got our fishing lines out and caught 2 Mahi Mahi on the third day!  Unfortunately I lost the first one while I tried to net it, but we soon had another bite and that one we had for dinner.  Delicious!  Arthur sauted it with olive oil, scallions, garlic and a little lemon.  We arrived in the Bahamas late last night and we had to go up and down the coast until daybreak when we could make a safe harbor entrance.  We are at Marsh Harbor in the Abacos.  We decided to spend tonight at the Moorings/Sunsail marina.  The local customs office is closed on weekends, but they will come to you at the marina.  We had to stay on the boat for a couple of hours until the three customs officers arrived.  I'm not sure why it takes three but I must say they were the nicest custom officers I've delt with.  It was very hard keeping the kids off the dock until we were cleared.  We also needed to wash all the salt off our boat and do laundry.

Up the mast

When does the Relaxing Part Start?

Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while.  We have been very busy doing uninteresting things.  We have gone into the water, but we haven't gone anywhere except for a couple of engine tests, to get diesel and to move to a better dock.  We decided to go through all our systems and to fix everything here in the states while we still have access to our car.  We checked all of our pumps and bilge pumps and automatic float switches and found one bilge pump's motor was dead and one bilge pump had some electrical problems that Arthur had to fix.  While he down in the dregs, I had to find a correspondingly dirty job.  I decided to rebuild our main head (the manual pumping toilet for those of my non-boating friends).  The head is a relatively simple pump and you can buy rebuild kits for it.  They recommend that it is rebuilt every two years, but people seldom do that.  They usually wait until it becomes an emergency fix.  You know, that time, underway when the the bowl is full and you used too much toilet paper and it just won't pump......   Well I wanted to avoid that, and by the way it squeaked when you pumped it, it was way past due.  We already had a rebuild kit on board with all new gaskets and o-rings and such.  It was actually a simple job that took way longer than it should have.  The first time taking something apart is always like that because I read and reread all the directions, making sure that 13A in the diagram  is the same gasket in my hand.  Next time it needs to be done it will take me 1/3rd the time.  How did I become the head mistress??  We also finally tackled the watermaker.  Again for my nonboating friends, a watermater is a reverse osmosis system that basically pumps saltwater through a membrane to get fresh water. I thought for sure we ruined the very costly membrane over the past year by ignoring it and not changing out the winterizing solution from last year.  Arthur spent a whole day rinsing the system and cleaning it with an alkaline cleaner. But wonders of wonders, it works!  We filled our starboard tank with good fresh water, not the brown stinky stuff that comes out of the faucet here.  Another thing holding us back was the dinghy motor.  We decided to test the dinghy since we hadn't used it since the summer.  It magically started the with the first pull, but there was no water pumping out to cool the motor.  We had to rig up a block and tackle to hoist it up to the high dock (we were not on a floating dock at the time).  We managed to get it into the truck and over to a great guy, Larry Holt, in Havelock.  It was the impeller and it took an extra day to get the part.  Our last job (why we waited for it to be our last job I'm not sure) was the anchor light.  I think we just forgot about it.  Last summer while anchoring off  Norwalk, we noticed that our anchor light was out. I remembered this the day before we were planning on taking off and anchoring for the night.  This morning, bright and early, I was hoisted up the mast to check on it.  Arthur tried yesterday to use our self climbing device that we bought this summer, but the main halyard got twisted when he tried to hoist the climbing rope. So, I had to fix that while I was up there also.  I had to be hoisted on the spinnaker line which doesn't quite reach the top of the mast by Arthur and Stephen was working the extra safety line.  I couldn't see to get the light down, but I could reach up high enough to take pictures of it so we could buy the replacement.  This lead to another trip to West  Marine where they know us by name.  Of course, they didn't have it in stock since it is a very pricey item.  How can a light be $500?  I hoisted Arthur back up on the main halyard this time, with Stephen again manning the safety line (he is becoming a pro at this).    Since it was on the main, I got to use the electric winch which was much faster and easier and he was able to get high enough to take it down.  We have to decide if we want to overnight a new tricolored  LED one like we have for Tuesday or to get just a regular anchor light.  The forecast is for rain and thunder storms tomorrow, so I don't think we will be heading up the mast until Tuesday AM anyway.

We are finally in the water!!!!  And suprise - our waterline is not too bad!  Maybe I can go back into the truck and add a few things I took off....