High Fashion Tumbleweeds or Drugging My Weasel

Saturday, December 2, 2006

November 26 - December 02 : Volley Ball Beach, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

We interrupt your regularly scheduled lives to bring you Week 2 in Georgetown....

As we have not moved the big boat in over 2 weeks, I am not keeping daily logs, but rather providing you with a running highlight of the week at hand.

This past Sunday we gathered with our friends up on the beach to play some volleyball. There are only 6 of us here right now and that coupled with the monsoon winds we have had ever since we got here haven't led to the best of games, but at least we're getting to play.

Speaking of wind, we have had only 1 day of winds less than 20 knots in the last 2 weeks. Listening on the SSB, I hear there are over 100 boats in Miami and Lauderdale waiting for the wind to drop so they can cross over. I am certainly glad we left when we did as I could not imagine being stuck in Miami for the last month like some people have.

From Monday to this Saturday there have been a bunch of swimsuit models (girls) here doing a photo shoot for Southern Boating magazine. It has become great sport to watch the spectacle. Some of the girls are very pretty, but almost all of them could use an emergency hamburger.

Ollie (from Dejarlo) and I saw one mega skinny girl blow across the beach and get washed out to sea like some kind of high fashion tumbleweed. Shitty Death !! Who ever said modeling wasn't a dangerous profession ?

The one non "winds of death" day we have had we spent a couple hours out on the reef. Visibility was really poor as the constant winds had kicked up lots of silt, but it was still nice to be able to get back in the water and do something.

I was looking for lobsters and only found one. He was too small to eat, so I left him alone. I thought we were going to go home empty handed, but at the last moment I spotted a nice sized Nassau Grouper hiding next to a rock and quickly made him my own. He turned out to be almost 4 pounds and we got 4 meals out of him.

As an aside, Nassau Groupers go out of season December 1 and are thus safe from hunting until March 1. I think it's a breeding thing.

Anyhow, while we were playing around the reef, we also found this large turtle shown side right. He didn't seem the least bit afraid of us and he even posed for Amy to take a few pictures. Pretty cool. I kept waiting for him to say "Duuuuuuuuuuuude !" like in Finding Nemo, but he must have missed that one.

I'm also pretty sure the turtle took the extreme closeup of Amy also shown side right.

In other news, Don and Mary off of Dark and Stormy conned Amy and I into hosting a Texas Hold Em tournament during regatta week in February. I think we're expecting something like 100 participants, so it should be fun. More info on this as it becomes available.

After the disappointing performance from our Boater's World lures on the trip down, I spent 5 hours over 2 days replacing all of the hooks and leader material with high quality stainless parts. I'm hoping this will drastically reduce the failure to catch ratio. (commonly referred to as the FTC ratio) Of course, to test this theory the wind will have to drop down below 50 miles an hour, so it may be some time before I can report on how it goes.

Right now I think the current plan is to hang around Georgetown until after the holidays and then start making one or two week trips to the out island regions. If we get a break in the wind this week or next, I think we're going to run down to the Jumentos for a few days for some serious spear fishing.

Other than that, not much is going on. It's still really quiet here and there are only maybe 25 boats in the anchorage. Amy and Mila are both well, but Milo is still trying to kick his cold. We've started giving him ferret sized doses of Keflex just in case he is getting pneumonia or some other evil infection.

Of course, trying to convince a fat, fanged, furry, four legged weasel to take his medicine is often easier said then done. Our routine involves four human hands, several rubber band restraints, Mila and some peanut butter. An odd collection to be sure, but in the end we get the job done.

Milo seems to be back to his normal fat happy self, but once in a while he sounds as if he might cough up a lung. Don't worry, we'll keep a close eye on him.

Ok, that about wraps it up. We now resume your regularly scheduled lives.....