Breakfast Horror and Good-bye Georgetown

February 24 - March 1, 2008

Sunday, February 24, 2008 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

Ollie showed up on my door step at 6:05 this morning ready to hunt. I must have missed something in the translation last night because I thought we were going to talk at 6:30 this morning about when we would go hunting, but there you have it.

I threw on my wet suit and we headed out the north cut. Ollie took me to some of the prettiest coral formations I have ever seen in the Georgetown area. Huge stag horn coral heads reached up from forty feet to within just a couple of feet of the surface.

We hunted for two hours and came home with two lobsters a piece. We also saw three hog fish, but couldn't get close enough to any of them for a shot. I was back on the boat with the catch processed and stored away by 8:30. Amy returned from yoga around 10 am and made us grilled cheesies for breakfast.

After eating I tackled changing the engine oil in the port side motor. I only have to do the port side these days and the starboard engine burns through so much oil that it sort of changes itself about every ten hours or so. Remember, the difference between ordeal and adventure is attitude.

At noon I headed in to play ball with the boys. The games were good but man was it hot. We had quite a crowd out to watch us play today and one unfortunate fan got beaned in the head by an errant spike. As an aside, I still maintain that the fact that he was hitting on my wife had nothing to do with my shot placement. Sorry about those glasses dude.

After ball we returned to the boat and showered. Before dinner we fleshed out the remainder of our to do list before leaving G'Town for the season on Wednesday. It looks like we'll be pretty busy the next couple of days.

Dinner was grilled lobster served with melted butter. The donor bug was massive spud and as such we were only able to eat half. To bed by 7:45

Monday, February 25, 2008 - Kids Cove, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

This morning Bruce, Brian and I met up with Willis from Whisting Winds at 9 am to try and stalk down a few lobsters for Willis's fridge. Willis doesn't hunt himself, but he owns the nicest cruising dinghy in the harbour so we said if he drove, we would do the diving and shooting.

Lots of my friends usually hunt with a dedicated dinghy driver so that you don't have to keep swimming back to the boat with your catch. This allows you to cover a lot more territory as you do not have to keep moving the dinghy to a new area. Because most of the guys I hang out with are hunters and none of us want to be stuck driving instead of diving this was the first time I had ever used the chase vehicle approach.

Right off the bat, Bruce and I snagged a medium sized pair of lobsters hiding in a little cave in about 10 feet of water. We surfaced and waved to Willis for a pick-up. He zoomed in and proceeded to accidentally run me over with the dinghy. Shitty death!

Fortunately for me, he took the motor out of gear and I did not get blended by the prop. I did drop my lobster and spear, but since said lobster was still on the spear, he didn't get too far. I dove back down and retrieved my spear and lobster and all was good.

Outside of that one mishap, Willis did a good job tracking the three of us and collecting our catch. We called it a day after two hours and 10 lobsters, 1 fish and 1 conch. For the record I shot 4 bugs and the fish. Bruce also got 4 and Brian brought up the rear with 2 bugs and the always wily and elusive conch.

The three hunters each took one or two bugs and we left Willis with five or six for his freezer. Thanks for the ride Willis.

In the afternoon Amy and I moved the boat to Kidd's Cove and began ferrying groceries, fuel and water out to the mother ship. Around 4 pm we called it a day and headed over to St. Francis for our last poker game of the season. There were 40 players and Amy and I both made it to the final 8 but neither one of us finished in the top three and got paid. Oh well.

After poker we sat with some of our friends and began saying our goodbyes. It's always a sad time saying so long, but it comes with the nature of cruising. We dinghied back across the harbour and retired for the evening around 10:30.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - Kids Cove, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

This morning I was at the water dock first thing and by 8 am I had the water tank and our three 5 gallon jerry cans full. At 8:30 I took Amy over to Hamburger Beach so she could have one last yoga session with her friends.

By 10:30 we were back in town finishing our provisioning. It took 8 trips in the dinghy to get everything back on board the mother ship, but at least it's now done. Around noon I made my final trip in to play ball with the guys. We got off to an auspicious start when our regular ball popped during the middle of a rally. I guess it was Georgetown-ed out as well.

We got a backup ball out and played until 3 pm. Afterwards all the guys and me and Amy retired to KB's for a few season ending beers. Amy did much better saying good bye this time and only cried twice. By 5 pm we had hugged/hand shaked our friends good bye and we made our way home.

Tomorrow I plan on running trash to shore, getting five more gallons of gas for the dinghy and then we're out of here.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - Thompson Bay, Salt Pond, Long Island
By Tom

We were under way by 9 am this morning. The wind was pretty variable, but we were able to sail the whole way across averaging 5.8 knots with a peak speed of 8.9. The sail was uneventful, but my auto pilot repairs did not hold up and thus we had to hand steer the whole way. I hate hand steering.

We rounded up into Thompson Bay by 3 pm and dropped the hook near Donna and Toby on Cariba and Jen and Dirk on Maja.

The wind was coming from the south west and the anchorage was extremely rolly, but the forecast says that the wind should clock to the north by 10 pm, so the conditions should improve by bed time.

Around 4 pm, Jen and Dirk stopped by to pick us up to go to Cariba for happy hour. Happy hour lasted until 6 and then everyone hopped into the two dinghies and headed in to Parrots of the Caribbean for dinner. Dinner lasted until 8 pm and then somehow everyone ended up on our boat for a quick night cap.

Everyone went home around 9 and we were finally able to crash. A very long and busy day by Team Dream Catcher standards.

Thursday, February 28, 2008 - Thompson Bay, Salt Pond, Long Island
By Tom

Last night at 12 pm the wind finally shifted to the north and our anchorage once again became a peaceful happy place. Unfortunately, when I walked outside at 5:45 to watch the sun come up, I noticed that Toby and Donna were missing their dinghy.

Shitty Death! Apparently last night their dinghy painter wore through and their hapless dinghy was set free to roam the open oceans on its own.

In a quite remarkable twist of fate, the wayward dinghy managed to catch the last 30 feet of land between us and Cuba and it wedged itself in up on the iron shore. Miracle of miracles, it did not sustain any life threatening injuries and Toby, Dirk and I were able to carry it back to the water and re launch it successfully.

Other than this mornings dinghy excitement, today was a rather quite, sedate affair. Around 11 am I took our dinghy into the Long Island Petroleum dock to drop off our one empty propane tank. Afterward, I walked the mile or so up to the marine supply store and got new line for our starboard side dinghy davit.

At some point over the last season, we managed to suck the starboard control line into one of engines and it pretty much shredded the exterior core on our composite line. Said line held up for about 7 months, but recently has shown signs of serious fatigue, so I felt it prudent to change it out.

By 1:30 pm I was back on board with the line swapped and everything looked good.

The wind continued to move east of north and by 2:30, we decided to up anchor and move to the north east corner of the harbour. Once re-anchored, Amy took a nap and I played computer games.

Around 5:30, we touched base with Toby and Donna and agreed to hook up at Parrots to have a happy hour drink and watch the sun set. We were done by 6:45 and we all returned to our designated boats.

Back home we cooked up some Strawberry grouper, some potato wedges and two micro steaks on the grill before retiring for the evening at 8:30.

Friday, February 29, 2008 - Eva Cay, Salt Pond, Long Island
By Tom

By this morning the wind had moved far enough around to the east that we decided to pick up anchor and motor down to Eva Cay a whopping 1.5 miles away.

The only good reason for doing this was so we could score some free wifi that I detected a couple of weeks ago when we were here last. Ok, I admit it I am an internet pirate of the Caribbean. So sue me already.

Anyhow, we were re-anchored by 8 am and by 9 both Cariba and Maja had moved down near us. Around 11 Amy and I launched the dinghy and headed into the grocery store across from the fuel dock. Amy managed to buy two bags full of green stuff while I scored a soda and a Reese's Peanut butter Cup.

On the way back to the dinghy we stopped and picked up our propane bottle from Long Island Petroleum. It cost $18 for a 10 pound tank if your interested.

We loaded our stuff into the dink and motored back to the big boat. Amy stowed her veggies while I re-installed our second tank. Afterwards, we teamed up to tackle the pin mold colonies growing on our head liner. It took almost two hours, but we eradicated the evil bastards; at least for now that is.

After cleaning, we changed clothes and then joined Donna and Toby and Dirk and Jen at the grand opening of the Long Island Breeze bar and restaurant. The place is in a gorgeous setting right on the water with a huge deck and a nice sized pool.

Tonight was kind of a test run as they aren't scheduled to open for good until next week sometime, but it was still nice to get a sneak peak in advance.

Amy and I hung out until 7:15 and then returned home to make pizzas for dinner. To bed by 8 pm

Saturday, March 01, 2008 - Eva Cay, Salt Pond, Long Island
By Tom

We awoke to strong winds and cloudy skies. To the delight of the 7 or 8 Bahamian construction workers trying to finish up last minute details at their facility, Amy, Jen and Donna went into the Long Island Breeze Resort to do yoga on their water front deck at 8 am. I stayed home and with the help of the weasels we held the construction horde in check (and safely away from our females) with judicious use of our forward mounted, 50 caliber, Barrett sniper rifle.

The girls returned safely and Amy made us breakfast sausage, egg and cheesies. Post breakfast, we got down to some serious boat cleaning. I tackled wiping down all the vertical surfaces with a mild bleach solution and Amy operated the vacuum cleaner.

It took another three hours to get everything clean, but by 1 pm we were done. I moved outside and cleaned out the two aft lazarette's in the cockpit. Talk about a shitty job! I did however manage to take about 100 pounds of junk from the boat to the shore side dumpster.

Back on the boat, we both showered and then set about making dinner preparation. Amy invited the Cariba's and the Maja's over for grilled lobsters with pasta, fresh made bread and a conch salad appetizer.

Our guests showed up at 5:30 and at 5:31 it started raining, which forced us inside. Dinner was excellent and it was fun hanging out with friends. The Cariba's are leaving in the morning and we don't know if we'll see them again before the states in a month or two, so we said our good byes and got hugs as they left around 8 pm.

Jen and Dirk stayed until 9:30 swapping stories and having a couple glasses of wine. They returned home during a brief lull in the rain and after twenty minutes of washing down dishes, we called it a night.