Milo's Tongue or Muscle Bound Demons

May 17 - 23, 2007

Thursday, May 17, 2007 - Volley Ball Beach, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

Another day in the rain. I'm beginning to think it will never stop. It rained so hard at times today that visibility dropped to less than 10 feet. I've never seen so much rain here in the Bahamas.

The weather kept us on board for most of the day. I used the time to put some silicone into a few holes that were drilled at the helm for instrument cable runs. I should have done this before the monsoon season started here, but there you have it.

Milo and I also serviced both genoa winches, not that they needed it, but because we were bored. After that I had to spend 15 minutes washing the grease out of Milo's fur and he wasn't very happy about it.

We made an early dinner of grouper fingers and fries before heading up to Saint Francis for Thursday night poker. We had a field of 25 show up and I ended up coming home in second for the second straight time. Amy made it to the final table and went out in 6th place.

After poker we had a few beers at the bar while talking to some of the regular players. We stayed out way past Amy's bedtime and didn't return home until 11:30. The ferrets must have gotten tired of waiting for us, as they put themselves to bed.

Friday, May 18, 2007 - Kids Cove, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

Hello and welcome to my birthday. Happy birthday to me.

Disaster once again reared its ugly head in the middle of the night. Another rain storm and a mondo down pour filled our dinghy and capsized it before we could bail it out. Shitty death!

I swum\drug the dinghy up to the beach and righted it, then hauled it back to the boat. The engine of course had to be completely gone over to remove all of the water and sand and it took around 4 hours before I had it straightened out.

This dinghy is really starting to piss me off. If I don't get this buoyancy issue resolved, I may just give it a bullet and put it out of its misery.

Work on the dinghy took most of the day, except for the twenty minutes or so when we moved the boat to Kidd Cove to be closer to town in case I needed parts, so we decided to postpone my birthday until tomorrow.

I finished up with the engine around 5:30 and after I cleaned up and took a shower, we went in to the managers party at the P&P. We met a bunch of American tourists down for the week that were staying up at the Four Seasons Resort. For the record, every one of them complained about how bad the service is, how expensive everything is, and none of them said they would recommend it to a friend.

We returned to the boat around 9 pm and I made steamed shrimp for a late night snack. The ferrets played in our food until 10 pm and then we retired for the evening.

Saturday, May 19, 2007 - Kids Cove, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

And it's now day 7 of the rain storms. If you had vacation plans to come to the Bahamas, change them, the whole damn island chain will have floated away.

Early this morning I made the finishing touches on the outboard recovery. Somehow the heim joint end for the choke cable broke off and disappeared, so I cobbled a replacement together out of the pieces of a small turn buckle and some duct tape. The motor seems to be fine now.

With the dinghy sorted out, I switched gears and did some general maintenance on the port side engine of the big boat and then did a general clean up of the cockpit area. It looks much nicer now. As an aside, Amy spent the day reading and playing with the weasels as she is not much help in the engine department.

In other news, Amy got an email from the Buddy Fred, who by the way I had dinner with while I was stateside recently, and in that email he mentioned to Amy why I may still be having trouble with my starboard side engine. Apparently I have been EXERCISING the demons instead of EXORCISING them. With the amount of EXERCISE I have been giving them, they have undoubtedly become much tougher than your ordinary demon should be and now I'll probably have to sacrifice a live goat or something to purge them from the boat.

Anyhow, we spent the remainder of the day lounging about on the boat catching up on email and the log book. It looks like we are going to shoot out of here and head over to Long Island for the regatta there on Tuesday or Wednesday. In the meantime, stay tuned.

Sunday, May 20, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

We made a brief trip in to the market this morning to grab a few sodas and some paper towels and were back on the boat with the anchor up and the engines running by 9:30. The wind seems to finally be steering back towards an easterly flow, so we decided to move back to our spot off of Hamburger Beach and the Queens Dock.

We had to anchor twice as the first time brought us too close to one of the other 7 boats still anchored here. See, even after 8 years and several thousands successful anchoring attempts, it's still possible to screw one up. Anyhow, with the boat properly settled in, we decided to go for a swim then make lunch.

After lunch the rain stopped long enough for the weasels to come out in to the cockpit and chase shadows around. By 1:30 they were worn out and back asleep, so Amy and I loaded up in the dinghy and headed up to St. Francis to watch the America's Cup races.

Unfortunately for Team America, we lost and are now out of the series all together. The Italians will go on to race the winner of the Kiwi\Spaniard heat for the right to challenge the Swiss for the America's Cup. Is it just me that finds it strange that a land locked country (Switzerland) should be the defending champion of the premier ocean race in the world? Hmm.

As the races were ending up, a large and ugly looking band of clouds moved over the horizon. We beat a hasty retreat to the big boat where we spent the rest of the evening reading books and eating Grouper linguine with the weasels while hiding from more rain. To bed by 8:30

Monday, May 21, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

It continued to rain throughout the night. The army base near here is reporting 9 inches of rain in the last 10 days. That's a lot of rain.

Milo managed to let himself out in the middle of the night, so he had me up and hard at work on his breakfast by 5:30 am. Mila chose to sleep in although her cage door was wide open. She obviously values her beauty sleep more than Milo does.

Lunchbox and I had grilled cheeses and grilled bananas for breakfast while we surfed the web and answered emails. Amy and Mila put in an appearance around 8:45, but since Milo had eaten everything else, the girls got stuck with cold cereal.

Amy and I met up with the Moxy's, Speedo Ed, and Norm to play volleyball at 10 am. It sprinkled a few times, but we were able to get some good games in. Around noon we called it a day and the 6 of us sat under the trees on the beach and had a few beers and just shot the breeze until 1 pm.

Back on the boat we went for a swim to clean off the sand and then I did a few maintenance things on the big ships engines. Mostly just checking vital fluids and pulling the spark plugs to check for signs of fowling. An hour later I pronounced the engines fit and that was that. Now if the rain ever lets up we'll be ready to go.

Speaking of the weather, the forecast is for more of the same, generally crappy weather for at least another week. I suspect that this will prevent us from getting over to the Long Island regatta. There just isn't good enough protection in Thompson Bay to anchor with these constant squalls rolling in every four hours from the south west. Oh well, there's always tomorrow.

After an early four o'clock dinner of shrimp pita wraps, we headed in to St. Francis for Monday night poker. We had 17 people show up and only needed two tables. With that size field, we allowed everyone the option of buying back in to the game if they went broke in the first hour. All told we ended up with 25 entry fees for a total of $125.

I got off to a slow start and fell as low as $250 in total chip count (out of $700 to start), but rallied back in the third hour to take a commanding lead and the eventual victory over new comer Mary Anne from Obla-Di. Amy made it to the final table and went out 5th overall. This was my 14th victory of the season out of 31 tries and netted me another $85. Of course by the time you factor in bar bill, laundry bill and entry fees for the two of us, we came out just $22 ahead. Damn it man!

We dinghied home in light sprinkles yet again, ran the ferrets for half an hour and then retired for the evening.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

Another day of rain. I hate this weather, I hate it so much. It's rained so much in the last two weeks that the reef denizens have moved ashore. See supporting crab photo side right.

The wind went west and very light sometime after 3 am this morning and so we ended up on the beach. I'm not sure how long we were on the beach as the wind was so light there wasn't any swell in the harbour. I dropped one of our engines down and we powered off the sand and rejoined the rest of the fleet facing the proper direction.

The engine noise woke up Amy and the weasels, so we made bacon, egg, and sausage cheesies for breakfast. Afterwards, we waited for a lull in the monsoons to head in for some volleyball action. The games weren't great and it sprinkled off and on. We were back on the boat by noon.

After a de-sanding swim, Amy attacked inside cleaning chores and I worked on filling some more cable run holes with epoxy to keep out the rain. Milo tried to help and ended up getting glued to himself. I had to remove several portions of his belly hair to free him. Needless to say ferrets will never make good plumbers.

The rain returned in the afternoon and drove us back inside. Around 2 there was a brief lull so we drove over to town to get some fiberglass filler so I can repair my wind surfer. I managed to hit something last time out and left a small chunk missing from the toe rail. I also needed the filler to fare my dinghy training wheels that have yet to be finished because of rain.

The remainder of the day was spent hanging out below decks hiding from the rain, reading books and surfing the net. We were so bored I taught Milo how to roll his tongue and he's getting pretty good at it. See supporting evidence side right.

Dinner was grilled shrimp pitas with rice and afterwards Amy washed dishes and I dried. Later, the entire crew watched Proof starring Gwenyth Paltrow and Anthony Hopkins. The human component of Team Dream Catcher thought it was good, but the ferret population could not be reached for comment at the time of this writing.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

The rain only lasted half the morning today, but what we lacked in rain we made up for in wind. The wind howled all day with gusts topping out at 30 knots. Of course the upside to this is that we are finally making sufficient power to allow for unlimited computer and internet time.

Amy and I took full avail of the power amnesty being offered during this windy period and consequently not a whole lot got done on the boat today. One of the few jobs that did get done was to remove both mattresses from our bedroom and wipe up the puddle that has formed beneath them during this week long deluge.

This operation sounds a lot simpler than it is in reality. First I have to squash the queen sized mattress down to a cubic foot hot dog roll and stuff it up through the hatch. Next I stand on the fore deck and pull while Amy and Milo push from below. When it finally starts to move through the narrow opening I then have to catch myself before I get tossed overboard. And finally when it comes all the way out I am now holding on to a barn door in gale force conditions. As I said, quite an ordeal.

With the mattress out of the way, I rebedded the leaky baby stay chain plate. This is usually a once a year job, but I couldn't honestly tell you when I last did it, so it was probably overdue.

Anyway, with our job for the day accomplished, I spent the better part of the afternoon playing online and working on a few computer projects I have been putting off. I've gotten several emails lately from people asking for advice about this or that and while Amy and I were talking we decided we were going to come up with our list of ten things we wouldn't go cruising without. I am going to put a link directly to the list on our home page in a couple of days, but for right now we'll just start out here.

The first thing I wouldn't go cruising without is a good, reliable dinghy that can plane easily with two people and groceries on board. Our first season out we did not have one of these and I can tell you it sucked the big one. The dinghy is like our car out here and I'd guess ninety percent of the places we dinghy to are over a mile away. If you're really into fishing like we are, then the average trip is probably more like three miles.

I don't want to get into "this dinghy or that dinghy" debates, because I'm sure everybody has their own idea. By far and large the most dominant type of dinghy out here is the rigid floor inflatable. I'd guess seventy-five percent of the cruising boats we see have this style of dinghy.

Of course, having said that, we have a rigid catamaran style dinghy, but that's just our personal preference. Mostly I just got tired of patching tubes, but then again I am lazy, so your mileage may very. Regardless of style, I don't think I can overstate the importance of carrying the biggest dinghy with the most powerful engine practical.

In other news, we formed an impromptu poker game around 3 pm with ten players up at St. Francis, mostly just to get off the boat. I did not place, but Amy finished third and got her entry fee back. We were back on the boat by 5:30 and I made shrimp linguine with garlic bread for dinner. Afterwards we sat in the salon, read books, and listened to the wind howling in the rigging before turning in by 9 pm.