Lunar Eclipse and the Net Nazi's

February 17 - 23, 2008

Sunday, February 17, 2008 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

Amy went in to do yoga on the beach this morning while I played with the ferrets. She returned around 9 am and we made some scrambled eggs and hash browns for breakfast.

Afterwards, I repaired another broken piece on our outboard and then took the dinghy to the beach to try and free up the tilt mechanism that allows the outboard to be raised out of the water. It's started getting really hard to move, but hopefully the WD-40 I applied will free it up some.

By the time I got back to the boat it was time to go play ball. Amy opted to join me on the beach today and while I played 2 on 2, she played on the next court down with the 3 on 3 guys. By 2 pm we were worn out and headed back to the boat.

After cleaning off, I listened to the Daytona 500 and Amy read a book in the cockpit. When the race was over I cooked shrimp linguine for dinner. After eating, we read our books and played weasel tag until 7:30 and bed time.

Monday, February 18, 2008 - Kids Cove, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

I was up around 4 am and surfing the net shortly there after. The weasels awoke around 6 am and joined me in the cockpit to watch the sunrise. Amy woke up shortly there after and joined her yoga friends on the beach while I made two hot dogs for breakfast.

And in the completely ridiculous and totally asinine category, allow me to spend a minute describing this morning's cruisers net. For those of you who don't know, the cruisers net is supposed to be a brief and informal VHF conversation where the days events or important messages are distributed to the masses.

In theory this is a good and useful idea, but in practice it falls woefully short. Not only does the net take way too long (45 minutes today), but there are so many people clicking over top of each other and arguing whether or not each announcement should be made in both English and French that you cannot actually hear what is said.

It's quite comical how big a deal some of the "net nazi's" are making about this. We actually had a pushing and shoving match break out today due to all of the arguing. Of course we exercise our option to not listen so as to avoid having to deal with these people, but all the same it's pretty funny.

Anyhow, after eating, I removed our engine from the dinghy and paddled over to Cariba just next door. Toby is letting us borrow his spare dinghy engine while we await a prop for ours. His spare is a Yamaha 2 stroke 8 horse model and it started on the second pull.

With a functional outboard, I made the trip over to town to get some groceries and some water. It was ok going across, but very wet coming back. By the time I got back, the wind had shifted to the south and we were dangerously close to the beach. We decided to up anchor and head across to town and by 11 am we had the boat re-settled.

Around noon we headed into the beach to play ball. We had 6 players show up and the games were pretty good. After ball we returned to the boat and got cleaned up and then Amy took a nap in preporation for going into Rake and Scrape at Eddie's Edgewater.

Amy woke up from her nap around 6:30 and at 7 we dinghied next door to Freebird for cocktails with John and Joann and Toby and Donna. By 8 we loaded into our dinghies and headed into Eddie's.

The Rake and Scrape band was very good, but as I am not much into dancing, I sat just outside at the basketball court and watched the Monday night mens league play. Everyone had a good time and we didn't get home until midnight

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

We were slow to wake up this morning due to our late outing at Rake and Scrape last night.

By 8 am I had the weasels walked and fed and then I made four runs in to town to bring water back to the big boat 20 gallons at a time. With our borrowed engine, it was quite a slow affair, but at least I can say it's done.

Around 9:30 I was done and Amy made me and the Wickies a breakfast pizza. For the record, Milo still doesn't understand how to eat pizza without burning his tongue and he is now once a gain a lisping weasel.

After breakfast, I hooked up with George on Sequel and we went out to the reef to procure dinner. Once anchored and in the water, we proceeded to find 6 lobsters, 2 hog fish and 1 tiger grouper within an hour and thirty minutes.

With our fish bucket full, George drove us home while I cleaned our catch. By the time we got back to Sequel and my dinghy, I had reduced our catch to a pile of tails and fish fillets. We divided the catch and went our separate ways.

Back on the mother ship Amy helped me vacuum seal and store our catch. I did a quick fresh water rinse off and then changed into volley ball clothes before I headed back across the harbour to meet up with my 2 on 2 buddies.

The games were great today and the high quality of play drew about 40 spectators. It's alway a little funny having people watching and cheering from the side lines, but I guess that's life in the fast lane.

By 2:30 we were all tired and we drug our worn out selves up to KB's for a post game beer. By 3 pm we were all headed back to our own boats.

Once home and cleaned up, Amy and I went to the beach to walk in the sand. After an hour we returned home and I made lobster quesadillas for dinner, after which, Amy went up front to read and I sat in the salon and surfed the net trying to find a programmatic way to reverse engineer SWF files with C Sharp. Any help is appreciated.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 - Kids Cove, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

A slow morning, or I can't remember what I did as I am writing this three days after the fact. You decide.

After returning from 12:30 pm volleyball with the boys, I cleaned off the sand from my person and then woke the Amy unit from her afternoon nap so we could make it to the regularly scheduled ARG meeting.

During my afternoon absence, Amy had made Keebler Elf Cookies from scratch, including the little the chocolate dipping part. We showed up at the ARG by 5 pm and were the hit of the happy hour feast with our pseudo-Keebler cookies. For the record, they lasted 14.5 seconds before being consumed by the piranha-fest.

We were back on the boat and cooking Hog fish fillets and a small lobster tail on the grill. To bed by 8 pm.

Thursday, February 21, 2008 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

After a quick run in to town with my woefully under powered dinghy engine to drop off trash, I returned to the big boat, upped anchor and motored back across the harbour to Hamburger Beach.

Amy woke up half way across the harbour and offered to drive, but I wouldn't let her as she had yet to put in her contacts and so equipped she tends to drive like a retarded bat. Oh yeah, lets just keep that between you and me. Thanks.

Anyhow, we arrived off our usual spot and dropped the hook in four feet of water. By 8:30 we were safe and snug and Amy made us breakfast steak tacos.

The remainder of the morning was spent doing boat chores, but at 12 pm I donned my volleyball attire and headed to the beach. We only had 4 players today, but the games were good none the less. As an interesting aside, after we were done and resting in our chairs under the palm trees, I had two young teenage girls come up and ask me for my autograph. How cool is that?

At least I am a legend in my own mine.

By 4 pm I was back on my boat and getting cleaned up. Amy was already dressed for poker night and as soon as I was ready we headed up to St. Francis for our last official night as "The Poker People". I don't know if we'll be here next week, so basically this is our last night of the season to run the poker game.

We had 29 players show and although Amy and I both made it to the final table, neither one of us were able to finish better than 5th. As we were wrapping up the evening, a squall moved through the area and dumped a ton of rain in fifteen minutes.

Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but since someone left the bed room hatches open, we returned home to find both weasels swimming across our bed room floor boards. Suck ass!

Thirty minutes later we (and the bilge pumps) had removed the water and by 11 pm we were tucked in for the night. See you tomorrow.

Friday, February 22, 2008 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

This morning I was up on deck and hanging out my sheets to dry after last nights rain storms. Once finished, I realized that we do now in fact look like one great big back yard laundry pole. Weird huh?

After laundry duty, I fired up the stove and made breakfast waffles for the crew. After eating, Amy went in to do yoga and I took the dinghy to town to catch a ride to the airport. Once there, I spent an hour and a half wrestling my shipment through customs and then returned home.

This shipment of goodies included our long awaited dinghy prop as well as the replacement fuel log for the grill and $200 worth of fishing lures. Ok, ok, so the fishing lures were an impulse buy, but come on, the plane was already flying this way.

Actually the fishing lure order was not just for me, but also for Mick (Escargo) and Toby (Cariba) and Bruce (Different Drummer). Mick and I wanted more of the super secret Williamson lures (shown right) and Toby and Bruce wanted in on the action.

Anyhow, back on the big boat I assembled our new prop and installed it on the dinghy. Lo and behold the dinghy now planes better than ever and our cavitation issues are a thing of past. For the record, the new prop Piranha and is completely composite in design. It also cost only $79 which is a $30 savings over the original from Mercury and the blades are swap-able in about 5 minutes.

Once the dinghy was back together, I took Toby's loaner engine back to his boat and then headed in for volleyball. The games were particularly good and we played until 3pm.

Back home again, I cleaned up and then we headed in to the Friday night ARG meeting. There was a mega-turn out and we counted over 140 dinghies on the beach. By 7:30 we were back on our boat and picking up appetizer number 2 to head to a private beach party up on the flip flop beach to watch the full lunar eclipse and to have a bonfire.

There were about 25 people at this event and everyone had a good time. The eclipse happened right on schedule and it was pretty sweet to watch. I have included our photographic attempts to capture the event, but they are not that good. Sorry, I'll try again at the next one in 2011.

We didn't get home until midnight, so tomorrows log will most likely be lame.

Saturday, February 23, 2008 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

I was right, todays log is in fact lame.

We slept until noon this morning and then I grilled a lobster for lunch. After eating, we cleaned up a little and at one pm we met up with Bruce, Bryan, Ollie, Willis, George, and Mr. and Mrs. Mustard Seed for a little private Texas Hold-em poker game up at St. Francis.

It was a $10 buy in with a $5 re buy and when the smoke cleared Willis and I ended up fighting it out for the big bucks. After struggling back to almost an even footing, he put me down hard and I had to settle for second place. I wasn't too upset with that as at one point earlier in the game I only had two chips totaling $55 (out of my original $1450)

After poker we returned home and spent a quite evening just hanging out on our own boat. Dinner was grilled Grouper with potato wedges and garlic bread. There were no leftovers. To bed by 8.