Monthly Archives: November 2018

Boat Repairs in Ft. Lauderdale

“Plans made on a boat are written in sand at high tide.” We know that, but still thought we’d be able to leave Ft. Lauderdale on Sunday, November 24, after spending four days at a dock on the New River and completing all the repairs on our list except a jib that wasn’t furling well while sailing on the ocean coming to Ft. Lauderdale.  On Saturday, while trying to fix it, the jib furler froze up completely and we realized we’d have to contact a rigger for help.

Monday morning we called Ft Lauderdale based Nance and Underwood, riggers we have worked with before. Unfortunately they couldn’t  get to us for a month, possibly in two weeks if they have a cancellation. We texted Scott, the hybrid guru who helped all of the Lagoon 420 owners when they were electric sailboats. He texted back immediately from France and gave us the name of a local man whom he highly recommended.

Kyle came to check our furler this morning. The good news is that he can help us. The bad news is we need a new one. Parts will be ordered and should be here in two weeks. We will go to Miami tomorrow morning and wait at Dinner Key on a mooring ball until Kyle can bring the new furler to us and install it. Mark has been able to fix 99% of the repairs on our boat, but this is one time we had to rely on an expert. In the last week and a half Mark has repaired or replaced a VHF radio, our watermaker, a bilge pump, the inverter, and  our chart plotter. While we heard the saying, “Everything on your boat is broken…..you just don’t know it yet,” soon after we moved aboard Seas the Day, I hope that is not true right now. We definitely need a break from this.

 

 

Lake Worth to Ft. Lauderdale

We left Lake Worth at 0645 on Tuesday, November 21, 2018, and arrived at Slip 4 on the New River Docks in Ft. Lauderdale at 1340. We arrived at 1240 at the 17th St. Causeway Bridge just around the corner from the inlet and went under the bridge at the next opening at 1300. It took us forty minutes to get to the New River Docks and tie up at along the sea wall just before the 7th Ave. bridge. We had to request two bridge openings on the New River and luckily got under the railroad single bascule bridge five minutes before it closed for a train. We went a total of 51.86 miles in six hours and 56 minutes, staying about a mile offshore with small swells on the port aft side of the boat.  It was comfortable enough that after exiting the Lake Worth Inlet and motorsailing for awhile, Sailor was convinced it was “safe” for him to go outside and sleep under the helm seat.

We have gone up and down the New River many times, every season except last year, since 2008. The river is not very wide and there are numerous megayachts,  sailboats, powerboats, fishing boats, tour boats, water taxis, pontoon boats, seadoos, kayaks, floating tiki bars, gondolas and small pleasure boats on the river. We have never had a problem, but this time on our way to our slip Mark moved over for a tour boat to pass us going the other direction and we went aground! The New River is dredged to the sea walls on either side, but unfortunately we found an area where the depth was less than five feet deep. Mark quickly backed out and we probably had no damage, but it was a shock after an uneventful trip here.

We are staying in a slip on the New River until Sunday, partly due to weather on the ocean for our sail to Miami, partly because we have a few boat repairs, partly so we could cook a Thanksgiving meal using various appliances, and mainly to rest and enjoy our last unlimited power and water at a dock until we return to Sunset Bay in May. 

We are located right across the river from the Broward Performing Arts Center. Several years ago we were here in December and saw “The Nutcracker.” Right now, “The King and I” is showing and the next production is “Legally Blonde.” The buildings are beautifully lit up at night and will probably be adding more decorations for the Christmas holiday. To the left of the Performing Arts Center in the photo below is the Huizenga Pavillion. Wayne Huizenga Sr was a well known businessman, entrepreneur and the founder of Blockbuster Video, Waste Management , AutoNation and owner of a number of sports teams. The family is well known throughout Florida for their philanthropy. His daughter and son-in-law are owners of our home marina, Sunset Bay. The pavillion is used for events and dining before attending the theater productions. The photo was taken from our boat.
Before we left Stuart, we purchased all the “fixings” for a Thanksgiving meal. Mark cooked the 14 pound turkey in our Magma Grill. In addition he made all the side dishes: mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, steamed asparagus w/hollandaise sauce, homemade cranberry/orange relish, stuffing and gravy. We have lots of leftovers in our refrigerator and freezer.
My job was to clean up after the meal. Naturally we don’t have a dishwasher, but even after meals this huge, I don’t miss it. However, it would be nice to have an empty cabinet to hide dirty dishes in until they can be washed. You can see the Broward Performing Arts Center lit up across the river through our galley window.
We are in a slip next to a small park and the paved Riverwalk runs past us. We are also in the widest part of the river at a turning basin, where boats have room to turn around. There is a lot of boat traffic, but the whole river in this area is a no wake zone so most boats go by very slowly and rarely make our boat rock.  Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a noise ordinance and some small craft have speakers spewing loud music at all hours of day and night. The bridge tender near us must have gotten fed up last night because we heard him yell over his loudspeaker to a passing boat to turn the music down or he was calling the police. The music abruptly stopped. Below are a few photos of the area around us. There are lots of high rise condo and apartment buildings on this part of the river. Farther to the east, toward the ocean, the river edges are bordered with huge mansions. The little park area below is a few steps from our boat. It makes walking Sailor very easy, although I suspect he prefers riding in a dinghy to the beaches.
Thanksgiving Day was rather quiet on the river, but the day after everyone who has a small boat must have been out, along with a few large yachts that have been farther up the river at the Lauderdale Marine Center having work done. The megayachts are so huge they are required to have tow boats guiding them.  We even saw a tiki bar pass by in the late morning, a little early for drinks, but I’m sure they tell their customers, “It’s 5:00 somewhere.” In this  picture you can clearly see the brown railroad bridge down and one of the the pink bascule bridges further on that opens on request.

Early Friday morning we woke up to the sound of bow thrusters. Many powerboats, all yachts and some large sailboats have these devices so they can maneuver sideways into slips or away from a hazard. Yesterday morning our boat was the hazard. A yacht was held up for almost a half hour waiting for the nearby railroad bridge to go up. Every 5 to 10 seconds, the captain used the bow thrusters to keep away from our boat as the current was strong. The bow thrusters can be heard through the water and I woke up to them at 6:55 am. I came into the salon, looked out the window and saw this.
Just after I took this photo through the salon window, in my nightgown, three men on the yacht’s bridge waved at me. Hopefully they thought that was a dress I was wearing. We don’t worry about any of the large yachts hitting us, since they have very experienced crew. The entire half hour they were next to us, two crew members were standing on her starboard side watching that she didn’t get too close to us. Several more crew members were on the bridge and the captain was using the thrusters as needed.

We always watch out for The Jungle Queen, a large tour boat that goes up and down the river constantly. Since we are in the turning basin, it is wide enough for boats to pass her here. Sometimes she comes so close to us we are tempted to say, “Pardon me, would you have any grey poupon?” (Google “Grey Poupon Commercial” to watch on YouTube if you are too young to remember this.) The photo shows a trawler easily able to pass the Jungle Queen. At some parts of the New River, this would be difficult. We always wait to hear where the Jungle Queen is located before we start up the New River. Seas the Day is 25 ft wide so coming around one of the many bends on the river to see the Queen might be hazardous. 

Grey Poupon?
Of course, Sailor was delighted to arrive on the New River. He seemed to remember everything from previous visits. Below are a few pictures of Sailor investigating the area.

Sailor was very patiently waiting for Mark to finish a boat chore so they could go for their walk.
Once they were on their walk, they crossed the bridge and walked on the other side of the river where they found many interesting sights. Below is a sculpture of a sailboat riding a wave with pictures of various local scenes covering the boat.
Of course, Sailor insisted on getting his picture taken on a huge chair that he had seen small children climbing on for their photo.
Since Seas the Day was across the river, some of the photos included Sailor’s home.

This area of Ft. Lauderdale is very colorful.

Walking a few blocks to Publix for a few items yesterday, we had to stop and wait for a train at a crossing. The recently added Brightline passenger trains are what is causing havoc in Ft. Lauderdale, not just the numerous prolonged closings over the river, but also stopping street traffic all over the city.

After a long walk, Sailor always insists on resting on a bench. Back home in Stuart, the chosen bench is either in downtown Stuart or in front of Sailor’s Return Restaurant located next to Sunset Bay Marina. Sailor has many friends in the area of Stuart near our marina, so he is always greeted and pet by many people. I think he misses the adulation he experiences in Stuart since he was mostly ignored by the people here. Sadly, every year we stop in Ft. Lauderdale there seems to be more homeless people. They are either sleeping on benches or walking around with large garbage bags holding all of their belongings heaved over their shoulders. 
The string around Mark’s neck is there to hold onto his hat in case the wind blows it away while we are sailing. I wonder what people who see him think it is. It looks kind of like one of those necklaces that light up in the dark. The string does seem to work since he hasn’t lost his hat yet, so perhaps he should get a patent for it.  Incidentally, the numerous bruises on Mark’s arms are due to blood thinning drugs, but seem to have gotten worse due to the hormone treatment he has been taking for his prostate cancer. 

We are staying in Ft. Lauderdale until Sunday and then will sail to Miami. We missed the latest weather window to sail from Miami to Bimini on Saturday and Sunday. The next chance as of now is at the beginning of December. We’ll spend the waiting time on a mooring ball at Dinner Key in Coconut Grove, part of the Miami area. 

Our tracking device, a Garmin inReach Explorer, will enter a new track every ten minutes while we are moving. The link to see it is  https://us0-share.inreach.garmin.com/seastheday

Finally, one nice thing about being on shore power is that we were able to decorate our boat for Christmas and actually turn the tree lights on! We purchased our three foot Christmas tree with attached lights ten years ago for our first Christmas on the boat. The pothos plant in the decorated pot is very special to us. Pothos grow wild in fields in Spanish Wells. Several years ago we took a small cutting to remind us of one of our favorite stops in the Bahamas, our last one each trip. 

Stuart to Lake Worth

We left Sunset Bay Marina in Stuart at 0947 on November 20, 2018, and dropped the anchor in Lake Worth at 1544, a total of 5 hours and 57 minutes to go 37 miles. We went under 12 bridges, beginning with the Old Roosevelt Bridge next to our marina, and ending with the Riviera Bridge. Three are 65 ft fixed bridges, which we can sneak under with our 63 ft mast and an anemometer (tells wind speed) on top of it. The rest either open on demand or twice an hour, on the hour and half hour or at :15 and :45 after the hour. We rarely have to wait for openings but today we reached the Indiantown Bridge just after it had gone down so had to wait a half hour. We are now anchored in Lake Worth very near the inlet to the ocean. We haven’t been on the ICW since May, 2017, but Sailor seemed to remember just what to do.

The plan had been to leave yesterday, but as they say, “Plans on a boat are written in the sand at high tide.” We were all ready to leave at slack tide, 0730, when we discovered our chart plotter was dead. This instrument has our maps and routes on it. That was just after we turned on our VHF radio and called a station for a radio check. There was no answer and the radio was not working. We stayed at Sunset Bay and Mark spent the day fixing them. We had a spare chart plotter so he replaced the dead one and he was able to fix the radio. We suspected that perhaps we had a power surge or maybe were struck by lightning, although both devices had worked a week earlier when we moved to a different slip in the marina and there hadn’t been any storms. Today everything seemed to be working as we disconnected from the power at our slip and motored to the fuel dock. Away from shore power, the boat gets its electric power on the 12 volt DC system unless we turn on the inverter and then we have 120 volt AC.  Everything on the boat works on the 12 volt system except anything that has to be plugged into the electric outlets plus heat and air conditioning. We do have 12 volt outlets and we use them to charge batteries, phones, tablets, etc. Today we discovered the inverter is not working. Mark thinks he can fix it but if not we’ll have to buy a new one before we leave for the Bahamas.

We always avoid going on the ICW on weekends, and especially holiday weekends. Apparently this is a holiday week, with Thanksgiving on Thursday, because today the boat traffic was as heavy as we have ever seen it. This meant we got waked multiple times, since many power boaters love to go fast on the ICW and don’t care who rocks wildly from their large wake after they pass. To be fair, a few power boaters do give us a slow pass, and we always try to thank them on the radio. There were two or three today. We also had problems at a few bridges. The photo below shows a typical example. This Sportfisher was going north waiting on one side of the bridge and we were going south waiting on the other side. We called them on the radio and told them we’d need to stay on our port (left) side of the bridge since this is a single bascule bridge and our 63 ft mast would hit it if we stayed on our starboard (right) side of the bridge. They didn’t answer our two calls, so we had to slow down when they went on the side we needed. Then they sped up and waked us just as we got close to the bridge which caused us to rock back and forth. Another time two powerboats were waiting on the other side of the bridge.  They didn’t answer our calls on the radio so we informed the bridge tender that we would wait for them to go under before we started. Usually boats waiting for bridge openings on opposite sides call each other to decide who is going first, although the “rule” is that the boat going against the current goes first. Most boaters don’t know which way the current is going or don’t care. The two powerboats probably heard us talking to the bridge tender and they went first. The two pictures below show a single bascule bridge with only one span going up. This is the one where the Sportfisher almost caused us to hit our mast on the bridge. The second one is a much easier bascule bridge to go through since both sides go up straight in the air.
Sailor hasn’t been sailing for a year and a half but he remembered exactly how to be a boat dog. He is always tethered to the helm seat with his life jacket on. He usually sleeps there unless it gets rough. Today, he had enough of the waking so he made me get in a bed with him. After we dropped the anchor, we took Sailor in the dinghy the short distance to Peanut Island. President John Kennedy spent time in Palm Beach and had a bomb shelter on Peanut Island. There is also a Coast Guard station on the island. Google it…..very interesting history. In the photos below you can see how close our boat is anchored to Peanut Island. The walkways are lovely and there are some nice sandy beaches.
While we were going back to our boat in the dinghy we had to wait while a cruise ship that makes short trips to the Bahamas out of Lake Worth was leaving. Sailor seemed to be thinking that he might like a bigger boat to travel on to the Bahamas.
However he has to be satisfied with our sailboat.
Tomorrow we will get up early and go out on the ocean to Ft. Lauderdale. The seas are predicted to be 2-4 feet and the wind is going to be following us from the north. We will stay about a mile offshore. The Gulf Stream is a few miles offshore here and with the north wind blowing against the Gulf Stream which is flowing north, the seas will be higher in it. We have reservations at the New River City Marina in Ft. Lauderdale for four nights. Hopefully we won’t need to stay that long, but the wind and seas are picking up on Thursday so we might have to wait a few days to sail to Miami. It will be the last marina we stay at, other than one in Bimini where it is difficult to anchor, until we return to Sunset Bay Marina next May.

Getting Ready for Bahamas Cruise #7

For the last year and a half, since June, 2017, we have been at Sunset Bay Marina in Stuart, Florida. Oddly, I did not post a blog about our stay in Spanish Wells and another one about our cruise back to Florida at the end of our sixth trip to the Bahamas. I thought I had, but haven’t looked at our SV Seas the Day website since returning.  

Here is a brief summary of the last month of our Bahamas Cruise in 2016/2017. We stayed  in Spanish Wells until May 22, 2017. We then sailed directly back to Lake Worth, Florida,  leaving Royal Island, near Spanish Wells, at 10:05 am and arriving at Lake Worth the next morning on May 23 at 6:30 am. We had to slow down at the end so we could enter Lake Worth in the daylight. The next day we traveled north on the ICW back to our home port of Sunset Bay Marina in Stuart.

We didn’t go to the Bahamas the following November, 2017, due to some medical news we received after returning to Florida. Mark had a physical and his PSA had risen. Over the summer of 2017 it continued to rise until he eventually had a PETscan which showed cancer in his prostate that had spread to his spine. Chemotherapy began in the Fall but after horrendous side effects, his oncologist changed the treatment to a hormone injection every three months and daily hormone pills. There were no side effects, Mark gained back the 25+ pounds he had lost during chemotherapy and he got his hair back. After a few months, he felt 100% better, changed his diet from mostly sugar to mostly organic and has been healthy ever since. A PETscan a few weeks ago in October, 2018, showed the cancer is gone from his prostate and spine. However, the hormone treatment will continue for the foreseeable future. We had decided shortly after his diagnosis that we would go to the Bahamas for the 2018/2019 season and that is what we are doing. He will have to fly back to Florida every three months for his injection and have his hormone pills mailed to him each month in the Bahamas. For this reason, we will quickly get to Georgetown, which has a good airport nearby and stay there until April. Then we will go directly to Spanish Wells for the rest of the season. Spanish Wells also has an airport in nearby North Eleuthera.

So what have we been doing for the last year and a half? First, as always, we made some changes to  Seas the Day. For example, we have never liked the one inch deep cushions in the cockpit. We have a large seating area around the table, but it was uncomfortable. Therefore we had new cushions made, now much thicker and very comfortable. In the previous post, you’ll see an older photo of our cockpit seating with two boat chairs in the corners. Since the padding was so thin we always put these chairs on top of the cushions. The new cushions are the same color and material as the old ones, so they look similar, just feel different. In the picture are two of our new Seas the Day pillows. Mark also sanded the drop leaf table he made several years ago and put a new coat of finish on it.  Also in this picture, we changed the chain for the hanging lamp, since the old one had rusted. 

At the same time, we replaced the helm seat. We had already had a new one built a few years ago since the one that came with the boat was extremely uncomfortable. However, that replacement was not exactly what we wanted so now we have a seatback that is high with a thick cushion seat.  Our sunshade panels in the cockpit were starting to wear out so we had new ones made, once again the same color and material as the old ones. We were never satisfied with the SPOT satellite location device we have used since 2008. Sadly while the tracking was good,  it disappeared after a week. Therefore we have no online record of all of the places we visited during the ten years we have cruised on Seas the Day. SPOT was the only device available when we moved aboard, but a few years ago the inReach device became available. Starting with this cruise, we will be using an inReach and the track is permanent. It also includes the ability to add a message, along with many other desirable features. Our new tracking link for inReach is here. It can be found on the menu of our website under “Location.” Each time we move, we will turn the tracking on and it will update our new location every ten minutes. At the end of that leg of the cruise, the tracking will stop and I will write a short message about the trip on the inReach page. 

When Hurricane Irma came through Florida in the fall of 2017, we had to evacuate. This is the first time we had to leave town for a hurricane. We drove 28 hours to Knoxville, Tennessee, and stayed there for one week. Under normal conditions, this trip would take us less than 12 hours, but of course the roads were clogged. However, when we arrived in Knoxville we stayed at a wonderful LaQuinta which was across the street from a Starbucks. 

The Treasure Coast of Florida includes the counties of Indian River, Martin, St. Lucie and Palm Beach. In other words, it runs from Vero Beach, south to Palm Beach with Stuart in the middle. Amazingly, while Irma went through most of Florida, the Treasure Coast was hardly touched. We returned to our marina to find there was no damage to our boat or the marina as a whole. When we knew we were evacuating, we of course removed the sails and everything that was on the deck of the boat. Since we were worried about losing power, we purchased an Engel refrigerator/freezer and planned to empty our freezer and bring the food with us. Unfortuately, the Engel did not arrive in time so we had to give away our frozen food. However, now we can use the Engel while cruising. It uses much less power than our current freezer and can also be used as a refrigerator. 

During our last Bahamas cruise, a cruiser friend (Penny from M/V Pretty Penny) sent us a photo of a display she saw at a local Florida store, Bealls. Everything had “Seas the Day” written on it. Of course, when we returned I immediately visited Bealls and bought numerous items with our “logo” on them. Now we have new cups, insulated glasses, rugs, wine glasses, plates and trays with the name of our boat on them. I don’t know why anyone else would want something with Seas the Day on it and of course they were all on sale for that reason.

After getting the results of Mark’s PETscan a few weeks ago, we began to seriously start to provision and make purchases of spare parts. Mark was very busy with the “to do” list he had been avoiding for awhile. Provisioning was very different from past years since we are now eating very little meat, lots of veggies and fruits, and whenever possible “organic” foods. Our eggs and chicken breasts are from free range chickens, our beef is from grass fed cows and our salmon is “wild.” We did end up buying quite a bit of meat with those qualifications, which of course meant everything was more expensive. We saved a lot by not buying massive amounts of candy (for Mark) and ingredients for all the cookies, Rice Krispie Treats, and homemade caramel rolls I regularly made while in the Bahamas. Instead of coffee, we bought green tea. We didn’t have to buy any cases of Coke for Mark.

As always, we have to make preparations for Sailor. A few months ago I sent away for the paperwork he needs to enter the Bahamas. He had his yearly physical, during which our vet signed the Bahamas paperwork. Provisions for Sailor are seven months of food, treats, Heartguard meds, Nexguard (flea and tick), shampoo and conditioner, and one final grooming. Speaking of Sailor, I’m sure he has missed running on Bahamian beaches, but he has enjoyed his twice daily very long walks preceded and followed by sitting on the marina porch.

Now that we are ready to go, as usual something breaks at the last minute. This year our freezer is not freezing. While we have the Engel, we bought too much and the excess frozen food was placed in our large freezer. Tomorrow Mark will order the part we need and in the meantime, another cruiser is having freezer problems too and they have friends who have an empty freezer in a house, so we were able to put our freezer contents in it. Whew! I have lost count of the number of times our freezer has failed and we have lost massive amounts of food.

Tuesday, November 12, was a good day to make the three day trip to Miami, but we won’t be able to do that. As usual at this time of year, fronts pass through Florida and delay our departure from Stuart. We should get another window to leave at the end of the week.

Below are a few photos of our activities from the last year and a half.

In March, 2018, since we were in Florida for once, we were able to go to the Spring Fling, an annual reunion party put on by Sailor’s breeder Moss Creek Goldendoodles. We drove to Orlando and stayed for several days in a hotel. The romp was held outside of Orlando, where Sailor got to play with hundreds of his relatives.

Sailor has worn the same costume for every Halloween of his five years. Before he came home to us, I had already purchased his sailor costume in small, medium and large. He’s a good sport about wearing it. In the Crew section of this website, you’ll see a photo of Sailor the day we got him wearing his size small sailor outfit.

Sailor has a BFFF (best furry friend forever) named Zorro. His dad Chris visited us in the spring of 2018 at our marina in Stuart on their way to the Bahamas. Zorro fell off a dock at Vero Beach so he couldn’t run and play with Sailor. However, in the second picture of them they were running together on the beach in Hole 2, Georgetown, Bahamas several years ago. 

 

While I didn’t write about our visit to Spanish Wells in April and May of 2017, below are two of my favorite pictures from this island. I had hundreds to choose from and selected one of Mark and Sailor playing “fetch” on the beautiful Spanish Wells beach. The other is a picture of our favorite activity in Spanish Wells – going to get a soft ice cream cone at Papa Scoops. We always rent a golf cart for the month we are there, which makes it easy to get to Papa Scoops, which is only open in the evenings.

One advantage of staying in Stuart last season was I got to have my daughter Jennifer visit more often. It was especially nice to be with her during the Christmas season. We always went to the beach when she came on her once a month visits. Her dad had surgery during the summer and she got to stay with us for a month, not her usual three day visit.

 

I also got to go to some of Jen’s Special Olympics meets. Below she was competing in a track meet. Loving to win, she was very disappointed that she got second place.

Finally, while at a dock we have unlimited city water, so of course we do as much washing as possible before we leave. Besides washing pillows, quilts, curtains, dog bed covers, and rugs, Sailor’s toys got baths. He is used to this so he slept through the whole process. Below are a FEW of his toys. 

As I was writing this blog entry, our water pump stopped working. Mark will work on it tomorrow, and has temporarily fixed it so we can take showers tonight. Each time we get ready to leave for a winter/spring cruise, something goes wrong. Once we got to our first stop at Lake Worth/Palm Beach and while trying to lift the anchor, the electric winch fell into the anchor locker. A week later we had ordered a new one and moved to a marina from the anchorage to install it. Another time we got to Miami at Dinner Key Mooring Field and had to use our dinghy to go ashore.  The motor froze up and it couldn’t be repaired, so we had to order a new one. Such is the life of a cruiser. We were told when we first purchased Seas the Day that “Everything on your boat is broken.  You just don’t know it yet.”

 

 

Georgetown to Spanish Wells

After spending our longest time in Georgetown during six cruises in the Bahamas, we were ready to leave on April 2, 2017. We had been on a mooring ball in Hole 2 for four months and a few days, so it was time to start heading north. We like to leave one month at the end of the cruise to spend in Spanish Wells before sailing back to the States at the end of May.

The first leg of our sail north from Georgetown up the Exuma chain is on the deep water of the Exuma Sound, so  we have to watch the weather closely and usually we have to wait at least a few days for favorable weather. This year the trip on the Sound to Galliot Cut, which we crossed through to the shallow Bahama Bank, was calm. After filling the diesel tanks the day before and making one last trip to the Exuma Market, we left the Georgetown Harbor at 0730, traveling with True North. They travel a little faster than us, and stopped in Emerald Bay for fuel. We got ahead of them but we both ended up at the same time as we anchored next to Blackpoint at 1410.

We can always tell how calm the sea is by watching Sailor. He is perfectly happy sleeping at the helm if there is little movement, however as soon as we start to rock a little too much for him, Sailor goes to the salon steps leading down to a bed. He has finally become willing to stay on the bed alone, where he seems to feel safe. This makes me happy since I have spent many hours on that bed reading my Kindle while he sleeps. Notice in the picture below he doesn’t seem to get the idea that he is supposed to be on the towels. People who visit our boat often ask what we put away when we are sailing. It’s a catamaran. Unless the seas are rough, or we expect someone to wake us on the ICW or an inlet like Port Everglades (Ft. Lauderdale), we leave most things where they are, especially in the cockpit where none of the items seem to move even in rough weather. Incidentally, if any of my childhood friends from Duluth are reading this, notice the bowl of rocks between the shell arrangements. Those are the ones I picked up on our trip to Grand Marais last summer and I will always treasure them as a remembrance of the three days we spent together. 

When we entered Galliot Cut and got on the bank, where it is much calmer, Sailor suddenly thought it was going to be too rough for him so he went to his safe place. The cut can be very rough, especially if the wind and strong current are going different directions, but this time it was near slack tide and wasn’t bad. Sailor stayed on the bed until we approached the anchorage at Blackpoint. After four years of living on the boat, Sailor recognizes that when the engines slow down it often means we are stopping. If he sees land, he wants to be ready to get off the boat, which usually happens shortly after we drop the anchor.

After we anchored at Blackpoint, we went ashore, passing True North. Sailor recognized his friends Cathie and Tom also getting ready to go ashore.

Sailor looks very happy to be going ashore.

We spent one day in Blackpoint and had only one goal – to get a few loaves of Lorraine’s mother’s coconut bread. Hers is the best we have ever had, especially since she uses freshly grated coconut which of course she gets from palm trees on the island. Her bread is baked in the morning so on April 3, we went into town about noon and got two fresh-out-of-the-oven loaves. Sailor got a few beach runs that day and on April 4 we left at 0850 to head to Warderick Wells. Cathie and Tom stayed behind to do a few more things and we met up with them again in Warderick a few days later.

On the way south last November, we stopped at a number of cays to snorkel and give my son Peter a taste of the beautiful water of the Exumas. Sometimes we visit our favorite cays on our way north, especially if we were trying to beat weather to get to Georgetown quickly on our way south a few months earlier. This year we went directly from Blackpoint to Warderick Wells and spent some time there with friends. There were a few poker games on our boat since Carina, True North, and Riff Raff were there with us. Also, Mark had time to retrieve our sign from Boo Boo Hill and add some updates. The photo below is from when he went to get the sign to bring it back to the boat. It held up fine through Hurricane Matthew last fall. He added “17” and touched up the paint a bit. Our friends Jeff and Jane on Carina had put their sign next to ours earlier this year. It’s always fun to see how many boat names we recognize when we are on Boo Boo Hill. As you can see, many signs end up in a pile. You would think that in hurricane force wind all of these pieces of wood, located on a high hill, would blow away but oddly they don’t. The rules are that you can only use wood for your boat sign. Just like you can’t take anything away from the Land and Sea Park, you also can’t leave anything that is not natural. Our sign has stayed there since we first put it up in 2010 on our first trip to the Bahamas. Boo Boo Hill overlooks the north mooring field on one side and the Exuma Sound on the other.

The “plan” was to stay in Warderick Wells a few days and then across the Exuma Sound to Eleuthera. Those few days turned into eight days. The wind picked up, which meant the sea did too, and we waited until everything calmed down. It took eight days to do that. Meanwhile, the mooring balls filled up as more and more boats looked for shelter from the wind. I continued to do a water aerobics practice each day by myself in a small sheltered cove near the Emerald Rock mooring field. Sailor got plenty of time running and chasing his ball on that beach. Dogs cannot go off the beaches on the trails, but he would love to go chase the hutia (plump brown rabbit size rodent) that are found all over Warderick Wells. 

On April 5, we heard what sounded like a helicopter warming up. We had passed a mega yacht on mooring ball 1, reserved for large boats, when we entered the mooring field and noticed there was a helicopter on the upper deck. Sure enough, the helicopter was preparing to take off. It was a very windy day, but the pilot was obviously capable and soon the helicopter flew south. A few hours later it returned, perhaps with visitors who had flown on a plane into nearby Staniel Cay,  or perhaps the people on the yacht were just taking a tour over the nearby islands. Again, the expert pilot  dropped the helicopter on the deck.

We always try to stay in the north mooring field at Warderick Wells. The setting is extremely beautiful. This photo was taken from Boo Boo Hill and we are the catamaran on the far right side of the field.

While we love being at Warderick Wells, eight days was more than enough time there we were anxious to cross over to Governor’s Harbour the first day the weather on the Sound was moderately calm. Mooring balls in the Land and Sea Park for boats over 40 feet are $30 a night and we hadn’t planned on spending $240 in Warderick Wells. We left through the inlet at at the exit from the north mooring field  at 0823 on April 12 and arrived in Governor’s Harbour at 1615. We have been here many times, but only stayed one day and started north the next day at 0635, motorsailing off the coast of Eleuthera to Spanish Wells, arriving at 1250 on April 13. We left Governor’s Harbour under a beautiful sunrise with calm water, as can be seen from the fact that nothing in the salon had to be put away.

We were now at our final destination in the Bahamas, Spanish Wells, where for the past six years we have spent our last month before returning to Florida. 

(This blog entry was written in May, 2017, but somehow I forgot to upload it until today, November 12, 2018 as I started to write a new blog entry.)