Hurricane Dean and Barbecue Stained Weasels

August 16 - 23, 2007

Thursday, August 16, 2007 - Volley Ball Beach, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

The storm edges closer and closer. It looks like we're in the clear, but if you live in Jamaica your screwed. The forecast for us here in Georgetown is for no more than 30 knots of wind when the storm passes well south of us.

I spent most of today doing absolutely nothing as I was feeling under the weather for most of the day. I didn't actually go outside until 3 pm when Speedo Ed called me up and asked me to come over and help him move his engine from the house boat to his dinghy.

Amy was much more active than me and she made a trip to the ocean beach in her kayak for yoga and swimming. She spent a couple of hours over there while the weasels and I napped and read books on board.

She came home around 4:30 and we took showers before heading up to St. Francis for poker night. It wasn't a lot of fun as we had the screaming drunk women show up again and they can pretty much suck the fun out of anything.

For the record, I finished second in the field of fifteen.

With the drunk women playing, the game ground on for four and a half miserable hours and we didn't get home until 11:15 pm where we promptly turned in for the night.

Friday, August 17, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

The entire crew slept in this morning. We didn't get up and moving until almost 9 when the ferrets revolted and demanded food.

Once emergency blue berry rations were distributed, we decided to up anchor and move back up to Hamburger Beach. Twenty minutes later the boat was re-anchored and we went for a swim.

Back on board, we dried off and made grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. Afterwards, I took the dinghy to town and got a couple of veggies for Amy and some diet pepsi for me. I also dropped off our trash and got 10 gallons of free R.O. water from the dinghy dock at the market.

By 2 pm, everything was put away on the big boat and Amy and I loaded into the dink and went in to play volleyball with some of the Army guys. They only had four guys show up, so we played 2 on 4 and Amy and I whipped them 15 to 11. We were going to play more games, but half of the group had to go back on duty at 4 pm, so that pretty much wrapped it up for the day.

We spent another hour hanging out on the beach having a rum drink in the shade of the palm trees before returning to the mother ship. We swam around for a while to clean off the sand and then we both took fresh water showers.

The weasels joined us in the cockpit for sun downers and after the sunset I made lobster linguine for the crew, which everyone on board likes. Post dinner I played video games and Amy read her book. We retired to our cabin by 8 pm.

Saturday, August 18, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

The storm is almost to Hispaniola. It appears we won't see anything more than a little rain and maybe 30 - 35 knots max wind speed, which is pretty good considering Dean is now a class 4 hurricane. You guys stuck down south of us may want to duck!

Today was a lazy day on board Dream Catcher. I did a few odd jobs this morning that took no more than an hour while Amy was doing breakfast dishes. We spent most of the day swimming off the back of the boat or reading in the shade of the cockpit.

Around 5 pm we got cleaned up and went in to play poker at St. Francis. We only had 7 players and neither Amy nor I did very well and we were home by 9 pm. The force was definitely against's us!

While playing, George (St. Francis) told us of a proposal that several local Bahamian business men are making. They want to not allow any more anchoring in the harbour here at Georgetown. Instead they want the government to install 500 moorings and give them over to "private enterprise" and make all foreign boats pay $15 a day to stay here. Yeah right.

I can't imagine this happening, but it would be pretty funny if it did. I bet you wouldn't get 6 boats a year stopping here if the plan were implemented. Anyhow, the wackos in town proposed something similar last year and nothing ever came of it, so we aren't worried. Even if something like that were approved by Nassau, it would take the local government 5.2 centuries to do anything with it, so again we aren't worried.

It always makes me wonder when some local "genius" comes up with a scheme to rape more money from the visiting yachts. They say they don't want us here, but yet we are the only economy they have here. God help them when Cuba opens up.

Oh well, see you tomorrow. Sleep tight.

Sunday, August 19, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

The outer bands of rain from Dean started hitting us last night and by sunrise we had 30 - 35 knots of wind out of the east - south east. All things considered, it wasn't too bad and our anchor held fine.

We spent the majority of the day hiding out below decks and in the early afternoon I actually got up enough initiative to make home made soft pretzels, which turned out really well. We munched pretzels through out the day while we read books and played with the weasels.

The internet was up for most of the day, so we both spent a lot of time online surfing around aimlessly. I started work on a new boat related computer program that allows the user to make their own tide stations visually on charts of the Bahamas based on their own observations.

This may sound a little weird, but the Bahamas have only one official tide station and that is in Nassau. All other tide information you may get comes from the Nassau point with a time shift added or subtracted based on local observations. In our travels, there have been a lot of places we've needed the tide to get through safely, so I thought I'd come up with a way to record my own findings for future use.

An example of this that comes to mind is Joe's Sound over in Long Island. We cannot get in through the cut because it is so narrow unless we have over half tide. Also because the narrow cut connects two large bodies of water, the current really rips through the opening, thus we not only need a half tide or better, we also need the tide to be opposed to us or else we have no steering. Complicated isn't it? Anyhow, I'll let you know when I have a working prototype.

I wanted to listen to the Nascar race from Michigan, but it rained out. The rest of day passed quietly and due to the high winds and rain we never left the boat other than to swim off the back. Around sundown I made shrimp pitas inside on the stove for dinner and we read books til 8 pm and bedtime.

Monday, August 20, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

Hello, and welcome to another Monday. The tail end of hurricane Dean past through most of the morning. It rained hard all day, but the wind never blew more than 30 knots, which isn't much considering Dean is now a category 5 hurricane with winds over 160 MPH. That's a lot of wind.

With the wind up, we made lots of power thanks to our wind generator and thankfully the repairs I made last week seem to be holding up fine. We took advantage of the power surplus to charge all of our electronic devices while watching a couple of movies on our lap tops.

During a brief lull in the rain I got on my swim fins and dug out my scrub brush and I tackled the dirt mustache on the hull of the dinghy. It came off with minimal effort and now I can safely photograph my dinghy without it looking like a ghetto boat.

Around 5:30 we gathered up our one load of dirty laundry and took it up to St. Francis for Monday night poker. While the laundry spun, we had a 12 person, 2 table, 5 dollar buy in game. The final two came down to me and Amy and in the end I spanked her. Together we won 55 of the 60 dollars up for grab and after paying for laundry, buffalo wings and a couple of beers, we walked away with 7 dollars and 12 cents. Nice!

Back on the boat I cooked a late night rib snack and Amy and I sat in the salon and ate with the weasels. Eleven pm rolled around and after we cleaned the barbecue stains off of Mila's white fur we all turned in for the night. For future reference, Amy's tooth brush works best for removing serious carbon based fur stains on your typical Champaign variety weasel.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

The wind slowly crept down from 25 knots this morning to 12 by this evening, but the wind driven swell on the ocean side of the island remained an impressive 6 or 8 feet. We won't be going anywhere until that calms down.

We spent the day reading books in the shade of the cockpit cover and alternately going for swims off the back of the boat or doing odd boats jobs. Around 2 pm I dinghied in to town to get 15 gallons of water and some gas for the dinghy outboard. For those of you interested, gas is now $5.15 a gallon at the Shell station for the regular blend.

While in town, I picked up 4 frozen hamburger-like patties from the frozen section of Exuma Markets. For the purpose of my own sanity, I will assume they were regular beef patties and leave it at that. For dinner we had grilled bacon cheese burgers on toasted rolls with string cut French fries.

Post dinner, we watched 11-14 which Amy and I both agreed was the dumbest movie we have seen in the last three years.

It was hot, muggy and windless by bedtime, so we buttoned up the boat, fired up the generator and ran the AC for four hours at bedtime. I know this sounds lame to those of you reading at home, but the ferrets and crew were mega-happy to say the least.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

The rain showed up last night around 1 am and continued until 8 this morning. The weasels and I took advantage of the free water and quickly scrubbed the cockpit out at first light. Actually I should say I scrubbed and the ferrets were in fact the scrubbing device used to effect the cleaning. Did you know that "ferret" is actually French for "Sponge"?

Amy wasn't impressed when she awoke to the little wet furry kisses of soggy weasels and she says if word gets out, I may be on trial with Michael Vick for weasel abuse. Speaking of Vick, what a dick. I mean really, here's a guy who has the world by the throat; 100 million dollar contract, another 150 million in endorsements and he has to get his jollies watching dogs beat the snot out of each other?

Hey Mike, there's a bigger, meaner, dog lover waiting for you in prison. Have a good time buddy!

Anyhow, the rain stopped for good around noon and the sun showed up shortly there after. I loaded my dive gear into the dink and went out in search of the ever elusive lobster. I tried the north end flats up near Glass Cay where I've hunted with Brian(Tonga Time), Jon(Freebird) and Ollie (Dejarlo) in the past and had success.

Today's hunt was pretty good and I came home with my six bug limit as well as two Hogfish, two Nassau groupers and one mega-sized, 8 pound Margate. All in all, a pretty good day on the reef.

Back on the boat, Amy helped me clean the catch and then we celebrated with rum drinks in the cockpit. Dinner was fresh lobster topped Hogfish served with a small side salad and grilled potato wedges.

The weasels joined us in the cockpit for the post dinner viewing of the sunset and then the entire crew retired below decks. The ferrets were so well behaved during dinner that they got to sleep in bed with us underneath our high speed fans in an effort to stay cool.