Adding a Little Spark

March 30 - April 5, 2008

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - Black Point Harbour, Great Guana Cay, Exumas
By Tom

We slept in this morning so as to allow the tide a chance to come back in. I've probably mentioned it before, but there is a rocky bar at the entrance to the Big Harbour anchorage here at Farmer's Cay. At low water there is only 18 inches of water over said bar and as Team Dream Catcher draws almost 3 feet, we cannot make it over with anything less than a half tide.

Anyhow, we lazed about through breakfast tacos and then upped anchor around 11 am for the 9 mile sail up to Black Point on Great Guana. We rounded up into the harbour around 1 pm and were both shocked to see thirty boats anchored here! Damn, that's a lot of boats for here.

We moved our way through the anchorage all way up to the head of the fleet and dropped the anchor in 4 feet of water. We're so close to the beach that I could probably take a running start and jump on to dry land. Yeah, really close.

The wind was up over twenty knots all day and we mostly stayed below decks doing odd jobs and surfing the internet. Speaking of internet, Amy said I now have to apologize for making fun of the church in my last log entry as we are currently using the "Bahamas Holy Bible" free wi-fi connection here in the harbour. So anyway here's a quick "sorry" to J.C. and the Boys. Rock on my Christians!

Dinner tonight was the last of the nurse shark done on the grill and served lemon pepper style on a bed of linguine with side order of garlic crisps. As an aside, it took almost thirty minutes to grill said fish due to the high winds, but I have to give the grill credit as it never blew out even in thirty five knot gusts and driving rain.

Shortly after dinner the rain started pouring down and we settled in for the night.

Monday, March 31, 2008 - Black Point Harbour, Great Guana Cay, Exumas
By Tom

The wind never dropped below 25 knots all night and I'm glad we're anchored in so close to the shore as there is a sizable wind chop out at the back of anchorage.

The weasels and I played in the cockpit until 8 am when Amy woke up and made us breakfast sausages and scrambled eggs. Milo rolled around on my eggs while I was getting a drink and Mila ran off with one of my sausages which I still haven't found. All in all a fairly normal breakfast running of the weasels.

After breakfast, Amy tackled dishes and I scrubbed the floors in the star board hull. Amy terrorized the weasels with the vacuum and I fixed the cabinet latching mechanism on the trash can in the galley. All of this productivity took us until 1 pm and after a short rest, we launched the dinghy and headed in to town.

After dropping off our trash in the conveniently placed receptacle, we walked up the only road in town and found a couple of guys building a new class C race boat. We hung out with them for fifteen minutes just shooting the breeze and then continued our stroll through town. We stopped off to see Zhivago at the Scorpion Bar and hung out with him for an hour watching tv before heading back towards the dinghy. On the way back we ran into Loraine (Loraine's Cafe) and she invited us into her house for a beer and to shoot the breeze.

Loraine is doing well and was enjoying the fact that so many cruisers are currently in the harbour. With her new wi-fi set up that we helped her with last year, her bar and restaurant is more popular than ever. We finally made it back to the dinghy and then the big boat. I dumped the 12 gallons of fresh water we got in town in to our tanks, Amy fired up the oven to cook my bread.

Twenty minutes later, the bread was done, but it accidentally ripped into three parts trying to get it out of the pan. An on the scene autopsy showed that my kitchen assistant, who wishes to remain nameless, (AMY) forgot to oil the sides of the bread pan before inserting the bread. Hmm.

With the bread failure we ended up having bread particles with butter for dinner. Weak man, weak. We spent the remainder of the evening below decks reading before turning in at 8 pm.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008 - Black Point Harbour, Great Guana Cay, Exumas
By Tom

The wind was still blowing over 25 knots sustained and this morning it started raining again about 8 am. After breakfast sausages and scrambled eggs we tackled some interior cleaning projects. I also replaced the door latch mechanism on the bathroom door and now after 12 months it works correctly again.

After door repair I got a call on the VHF from Loraine asking me if I could stop by and help her out, so we launched the dinghy and went in to town. It turns out that the elementary school principals computer crashed and Loraine said she'd try and find someone who could help her.

So after 15 years of successfully avoiding it, I had to make a trip to the principals office. Mrs. Roberts was very nice and very appreciative of us coming by. The problem turned out to be pretty serious and as it was near quitting time, we made plans to get together tomorrow at 10 am to resume work.

Once free of the principals office, I met up with Amy who was hanging out with Zhivago at Scorpio's Bar and enjoying the 2 for 1 happy hour rum drinks. Quite a crowd turned out and we made several new friends.

Happy hour wound down around 5:30 and we returned home to a grilled lobster tail and baked potato dinner. After eating, we watched the sunset and then retired with our books.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008 - Black Point Harbour, Great Guana Cay, Exumas
By Tom

Day three of extreme winds continued. The wind hasn't dropped below twenty knots in so long that I am beginning to think we may never be able to continue north. On the positive side, we are making so much power from our wind generator that I'm thinking of running a long extension cord and selling some of it back to the island.

Not too much to report from today aside from the high wind. I made another trip in to the principals office this morning at 10 am and by noon her computer was as good as its going to get. I think her computer is probably older than most of her students and as such, there was only so much I could do with it.

In the end I had to format the drive and reload the operating system. Really I should have just installed Ubuntu instead of Windows as it is far more forgiving of older. slower systems, but that would have meant having to give Linux 101 lessons to someone who has never heard of it much less seen it. Once again Mrs. Roberts was very appreciative of my time and it was nice to be able to help out a little.

Back on the boat Amy made banana bread and I surfed the net. Mostly I looked at weather information trying to figure out when we can move again, but it doesn't look too good right now.

Around 3 pm Amy and I combined efforts to make our own croutons from the remains of the bread that exploded a couple of days ago. We had never done this, but we've been talking about it for like the last three years, so there was no more putting it off.

After chopping, mixing, seasoning and marinating, we were both surprised when the croutons emerged from the oven very edible and quite tasty. Mmm, yum.

For dinner we had bbq mutton snapper served with a salad and croutons. Afterwards we sat in the cockpit and watched the sun set over a glass of Pinot. By 7:30 we were in our cabin reading with the weasels and ready for bed

Thursday, April 03, 2008 - Black Point Harbour, Great Guana Cay, Exumas
By Tom

The guys on two PDQ power cats came by this morning in time for the 8 am weather dude broadcast. They brought their little Grundig SSB receivers with them and I showed them how to fine tune them enough so as to be able to hear the broadcast.

After ten minutes of fiddling with the unit, we dialed in the weather dude with no problems. I told them not to feel too bad as I had to have someone show me what it was that I was looking for when I first got mine. For the record, I liked their little Grundig unit and it seemed pretty comparable to my Sony.

After the guys left, Amy woke up and made us some scrambled eggs and the last of our sausage. Shitty death! No more sausages until we get back to the US. We have just entered a sausage state of emergency.

Post breakfast clean up, I got online and worked on a couple of computer projects and then downloaded the latest 7 day run of the GFS weather model. Armed with that and my notes this mornings weather dude transmission, I spent some time planning out or next couple of days of travel.

Tomorrow it looks like the wind will drop below 20 knots for the first time in almost a week, so I think we'll up anchor and sail up to Staniel Cay tomorrow. It's a short 6 mile trip, so it shouldn't be too bad even if the wind is higher than foretasted.

From Staniel we'll jump up to Shroud or Norman's on Saturday where if the weather holds we'll stage to head to Nassau on Sunday. If the long range forecast holds, we'll probably sail out of Nassau Monday evening and go over night to Bimini at first light. From Bimini we'll wait for a weather window to jump back across the gulf stream to Florida.

Anyhow, thats the current thinking. We'd like to be in Vero Beach by the 12th or 13th as this will give me a little over a month to get my driver's license renewed before it expires.

So the afternoon sort of drifted by. I made a brief run in to town to drop off trash and to get 10 more gallons of water, but other than that we didn't really get off the boat. Amy spent some time surfing the net while I read a book in the cockpit.

Around 4:30 we stared the grill and I cooked 14 buffalo wings. We watched the movie Sahara over dinner and by 7 pm we were in our room and ready for bed. We called it an early day for no good reason what so ever.

Friday, April 04, 2008 - Big Majors Key, Exumas, Exumas
By Tom

We were up and under way by 7 am, which put us at our days destination by 7:50. We had a brisk sail up to Staniel and we put the hook down right off of town by 8. Once the boat was settled, we launched the dinghy and headed in to Isles General to see if they had any fresh veggies (2 tomatoes, 1 pepper and something I couldn't identify) as well as some motor oil.

We returned to the mother ship and stowed our few purchases and then at noon we headed in to the Staniel Cay yacht club to have some lunch. We ended up splitting a plate of cracked conch and french fries. While having lunch, we ran in to the crew from On Watch as well as Star Gazer, so we hung out at the bar for a couple of hours catching up on where we had each been lately.

Around 3 pm we were back on the boat and we decided to up anchor and move around to the back side of Big Majors so as to have an easier time getting under way tomorrow morning when there wouldn't be much light.

By 3:30 we were re-anchored and I took a quick swim off the back of the boat. At 5:30 we went in to the beach to hang out with a bunch of other cruisers. We had about 20 people show up and it was a nice quiet affair. After the sunset, we had a big bonfire which we watched for little while before returning home and calling it a day.

Tomorrow we continue our trek north.

Saturday, April 05, 2008 - West Middle Anchorage, Shroud Cay, Exumas
By Tom

I was up and running the weasels at 6 am. We paused long enough to catch the weather dude at 6:30 and then continued to wrestle until 7:10 when Amy woke up. Play time was over and it only took us 15 minutes to get under way.

We set a full main sail and 50% of the jib and off we went. We rounded Sandy Cay and left Staniel and all the friends we've made here over the last five years in our wake. See you later guys.

The wind was dead behind us blowing 20 - 25 knots as we raced north. We were averaging 6.5 knots which considering we were running wing on wing was pretty good. We had to gibe a couple of times to keep both sails flying, but all in all it was a pretty nice sail.

Around noon, we shook out the rest of head sail and continued northward at 8.5 knots. Shroud Cay crept over the horizon around 1 pm and by 2:15 we had the anchor down and the boat to bed.

We spent the afternoon lounging about. Amy read in our cabin and napped with the weasels while I played video games and went for a swim.

I did do one minor boat job in the late afternoon. Our stove and oven is supposed to be an electric start deal, but the igniter hasn't worked in like two years. I recently read somewhere that our model is a double A battery powered spark igniter so I spent 15 minutes looking for and then replacing said battery.

Low and behold, the new battery fixed the problem and we're back in business. This of course has led me to wonder if this is what people meanwhen they say that they needed to add a little spark to their marriage?

Ok, sorry, that was lame. I will replace that joke with a much funnier one soon.

Other than stove repair, I did nothing interesting for the rest of the day. Dinner was grilled bacon wrapped steaks and we are now completely out of beef products on board Dream Catcher! Oh no!

We watched the sun go down over the Bahama banks and turned in by 8 pm. Tomorrow it's another 40 mile sail to Nassau and our first stop in the big city in almost a year. See you later