Hanging Out in Long Island

March 2 - 8, 2008

Sunday, March 02, 2008 - Eva Cay, Salt Pond, Long Island
By Tom

Hello and welcome to Sunday.

Not much to report today other than Cariba left for Georgetown and the wind blew a solid twenty plus all day long. We never left the boat and I was only outside for a sum total of fifteen minutes all day long.

Mostly I spent the entire day working with our third string lap top trying to get Ubuntu Linux running correctly. For the most part it works exactly as advertised, but I'm having a hell of a time trying to get the USB 2.0 wireless network adapter to initialize. Damn you Linux, see my power for God's sake!

I gave up by 1 pm and instead decided to work on my weather center application on the traditional Windows operating system. Stay tuned for future release date next week.

In the afternoon I got so bored that I took the binoculars up on deck and watched the 150 foot fuel tanker Ocean Energy do a stern to anchor deal at Long Island Petroleum to refill the island's fuel supply. Suffice it to say I am glad that I don't have that job.

Four o'clock finally brought the start of the Nascar race from Las Vegas to the satellite radio and I listened to that while I made some BBQ ribs and a Tequila Lime chicken breast for Amy on the grill. We ate around 6 pm and then listened to the end of the race.

By 8:15 the weasels were put to bed and we followed suit fifteen minutes later. Hopefully we'll move on tomorrow or the next day as after last night's lobster feast, we are currently experiencing a serious lobster shortage.

Suddenly I feel the urge to spear something in the head.

Monday, March 03, 2008 - Thompson Bay, Salt Pond, Long Island
By Tom

I was up in time to catch the weather dude for like the first time in three weeks. Man how lame am I?

Weather Dude said that the weather is going to suck for the next 5 days and he advises that we keep our heads down and the boat in a safe harbour until at least Saturday. I guess we'll be waiting a few more days.

Around 10 am we launched the dinghy and headed into the fuel dock to drop off trash and to make a quick trip up to the grocery for a few staples. We were back on the dinghy by 10:30 and to the mother ship by 10:40.

Once everything was put away, we upped anchor, rolled out the head sail and cruised up to the north end of Salt Pond and Thompson Bay. We had the hook down twenty minutes later and by noon we were safe and sound.

After a brief rest period, we loaded the weasels in their travel case and took them up to the Parrots of the Caribbean to meet Katrina and Tamika. While there, we also met the owner Richard. He was pretty cool and bought us each a drink.

The ferrets had had enough half an hour later and so we returned to the big boat. In the late afternoon, Amy took a nap and I watched a really bad movies on the computer. Man, when did "Made for Video" become an acceptable genre? Hollywood sucks.

Amy slept through the afternoon so I had two death dogs for dinner, watched one more cheesy movie and turned in for good by 8:30.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008 - Eva Cay, Salt Pond, Long Island
By Tom

Several violent squalls moved through our area last night and this morning, so I was up awake and reading a book in the salon for the better part of the night. Amy woke up right after the weather report and made us sausage and egg cheesies for breakfast.

The weather is still a little unsettled for moving, so we plan on holding tight at least another day. I spent most of the morning cleaning the cockpit. This entailed using Oxolok acid to scrub all the surfaces down and then a quick fresh water rinse to keep the acid from eating through the boat. Yeah, it pretty well sucked.

By noon I was finished so we loaded into the dink and headed in to walk around town. We walked a couple of miles to a near by beach and then stopped at Tryphina's place on the way back for a beer. We were back on the boat around 3 pm and I fired up the grill and cooked a lobster and pineapple pizza for dinner.

The rain returned around 5 pm and we spent the rest of the night shut in below decks reading books and playing with the weasels.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008 - Eva Cay, Salt Pond, Long Island
By Tom

Dirk and Jen stopped by this morning to say goodbye. They are heading onward to the Turks and Caicos this morning, so this is probably the last we will see of each other this season. Good luck guys, be safe.

We spent another laid back day doing minor boat projects in the morning followed by a trip up to Parrots to do laundry. Laundry was a wash out (pun intended) as there was no water for the machines. Seems like a pretty poor planning error to me, but there you have it.

Since laundry was out, we opted for a beer and some wings instead. Mary, the cook bought our food and drinks for us as a way to say thank you for us giving her son my wind surfer. I had decided a while ago to find it a good home here in the islands for my board rather than drag it all the way back to the states and have to give it away there.

While the board was great to learn on, it is actually older than Amy and I had maxed out on learning with it quite some time ago. Mary's son, Dwight is about 18 or 19 years old and he was very excited to take ownership of my boad. I had met his older brother a couple of weeks ago when we shared a beer and started talking.

It turns out that Chuck (the older brother) is starting up a web design business and when he found out I had worked with computers he had a couple of tech questions for me. After talking a while I mentioned that I was looking for a new home for my wind surfer and Chuck said his younger brother was interested in learning to surf. I said to have him me give me a call on the VHF if he was interested and sure enough this morning he called.

We made plans to meet at the fuel dock at 4 pm, so Amy and I loaded up all the sails and the board and dinghied in. We met up with Dwight and one of his buddies and showed him how to rig everything. He offered me some cash, but I declined. Actually it was just kind of nice to be able to give something back to the community over here as they really bend over backwards to make us feel welcome. Enjoy guys.

Anyhow, back on the big boat we waited until 5 pm and hit the grocery store. The weekly freighter was in this morning carrying fresh produce from Nassau so we wanted to give the guys time to unload the fresh stuff and get it on the shelves.

We were in luck and there was lots of fresh stuff. We loaded up our bags and were back on the big boat by 5:30. Amy unpacked while I made two quick runs to the fuel dock to get another 20 gallons of fuel and then we called it a day.

I wanted to take the big boat to the fuel dock, but this pud on board an Endeavor 40 named Wanderlust came in for ten gallons of diesel at noon and then left his boat tied up in the only fuel slip for three hours while he and his wife went out to lunch.

This may sound kind of trivial to you guys playing along at home, but this is the only fuel dock within 50 miles of here and there is a large fishing fleet that bases out of Thompson Bay. We saw at least six other boats counting us that had to turn away because one idiot can't use some common sense.

What an ass. Hopefully he'll read about himself here and feel bad, but I doubt it.

Anyhow, we cooked Hogfish filled pitas on the grill with potato wedges and garlic bread for dinner. While eating we listened to satellite radio news for an hour. Aftewards, we cleaned up the dishes and then turned in with our books for the evening.

Thursday, March 06, 2008 - Eva Cay, Salt Pond, Long Island
By Tom

This morning's weather report says we're still pinned down until Saturday when the next front is scheduled to come through. I think we are going to opt to hang out here in the relative protection of Salt Pond until Sunday and then head south.

The only real outstanding boat job on today's menu was to scrub the port side hull. Amy did the starboard side yesterday, but as we have only one scraper I had to wait for her to finish. By the time she was done, it was too dark for me to do me to do my side and I decided to put it off another day.

Well, I was out of excuses today and as such I had to dive in and do the nasty. My side wasn't too bad and I had the evil underwater life forms removed in about an hour. Other than the scrubbing the only other thing I did today of value was spend three hours working out the bugs in my new weather center section of Flotsam that allows me to download and store off line the complete GFS model system. It works now and life is good.

Around 5 pm I took out a quarter Grouper and whipped up a serving of secret fish sauce #3 for him to marinade in. By 6 he was ready to cook and while I sizzled him up on the grill, Amy made us some accompanying rice.

Dinner was particularly excellent and there were no leftovers. Amy was reading by 7 pm and I watched The Guardian for the third time before turning in at 9:30

Friday, March 07, 2008 - Eva Cay, Salt Pond, Long Island
By Tom

The wind continued to blow at 25 knots all day and as such we never got off the boat. In fact we didn't even have the dinghy in the water, so there was no danger of us heading anywhere.

The goat-rapers at NOAA say that we aren't suppose to have more than 10 knots of wind today and tomorrow, so of course the wind is so strong we can't even get off the boat. Our tax dollars at work, yeah, right.

Anyhow, we spent the morning working on inside cleaning projects. Amy tackled the head while I cleaned out both spare parts bins in the port side forward cabin. I basically went through all of my spares and if it hadn't seen the light of day in the last three years, it was targeted for removal.

By the time I was done, I had another 50 pounds of junk to toss in the dumpster. In my opinion, our water line is really starting to reflect our weight reduction efforts, but Amy says its just that I ran out of whiskey. She's always bringing me down like that.

We broke for lunch around noon when I fired up the grill and cooked a lobster tail and some plantains. We shared a nice bottle of African white and then I made bread while Amy culled through our book collection removing ones that we have both read and putting them in the "To Be Traded" pile.

By three I was busy surfing the internet and working on some coding projects and Amy was taking an afternoon siesta with the weasels. Around five I started cooking the bread and true to form, all three remaining crew members woke up as soon as they smelled fresh bread baking.

For dinner, I made pressure cooker ribs and Amy made a broccoli casserole and we shared the fresh bread. I wasn't alone in hiding from Amy's vegetable goo as even the wickies wouldn't touch it. After dinner we played a couple of games of gin and then called it a day

Saturday, March 08, 2008 - Eva Cay, Salt Pond, Long Island
By Tom

I was up in time to catch the weather dude and it looks like we're finally going to be able to head out tomorrow. Of course weather dude is still saying we need to wait one more day, but the GFS model I downloaded from the internet seems to think it will be ok and at this point I'm just looking for someone to agree with me.

We hung out and read, computed and played with the weasels until noon when we launched the dinghy, gathered three bags worth of trash and headed in to town. After dropping of our accumulated garbage, we hit both grocery stores and the gas station.

By two we had everything stored back on the boat, so we decided to swing by Parrots for a farewell beer. We ended up hanging out with our friends there until almost 5 pm when we returned home, stowed the dinghy and made sure the boat was ready for an early morning departure.

Amy made us a large conch salad for dinner and we were only able to eat half. Trust me, they were some big ass conch.

To bed by 7:30 in anticipation of a long day tomorrow.