Bored Enough for Board Repair

September 20 - 26, 2007

Thursday, September 20, 2007 - Volley Ball Beach, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

I was up by 5:30 mostly because the weasels wanted food. We watched the sunrise together in the cockpit over shared diet Pepsi and dried blue berries.

I worked on my computer until about 9 am when Amy joined the living and made us breakfast hot dogs. We're out of most other breakfast foods, so it was either the dogs or go hungry.

I finished up computer work by 11 and was outside wind surfing when Bo from Free Spirit stopped by. He is having more computer problems so he brought his machine by for me to take peak. Somehow he has managed to install spy ware on it although he swears he hasn't loaded anything.

I removed the offending software and had him back together in about half an hour. After he left I tooled around the harbour some more on my wind surfer until the mast repair gave up again and I went sprawling. Fortunately I was only 40 meters from the big boat, so I sort of half swam, half drug my broken board home.

Amy helped me stow everything and I am now back to having a non-functioning universal joint.

Amy spent the afternoon reading books and I sat in the cockpit trying to keep myself busy. Around 5 we took showers and headed up for Thursday night poker. We had the same 10 people show up as last time (or pretty much every time for the last 2 months) and when the dust settled I finished on top again. Michelle finished second and Amy came home in third.

After cards, we hung out with George, Charlie, Greg and Michelle having a couple of drinks and telling stories. We didn't get home until after midnight, so no one will be awake here in the morning

Friday, September 21, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

It was a lazy morning and we didn't really get going until 10 am. Even the weasels slept in which is odd.

Because it was so late, we opted to move the boat up to Hamburger Beach and then have grilled hamburgers for lunch.

I spent the afternoon working on another repair for my mast base as well as defending the universe from the invading hordes of space aliens in my new computer game. Amy did some cleaning inside the boat and read in the shade of the cockpit, but she reported finding no aliens in her travels.

Amy wasn't feeling well in the afternoon, so she laid down and the weasels and I were left to fend for ourselves. We shared a couple of beers, a small steak and 6 shrimp on the grill for dinner. I watched the third Harry Potter movie before joining Amy in our cabin for the evening.

Saturday, September 22, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

I was up and out surfing at first light this morning. My latest repair seems to be holding up a little better, but only time will tell. I was able to find a replacement part for it, but it will take several weeks to get here, so I am hopeful mine will last that long.

Around 9 or so, I returned to the mother ship and joined Amy and the weasels for a breakfast of grilled cheesies. Post cheese-fest I serviced the port side engine and then put new safety ties on our spare anchor's shackles. Amy did dishes and cleaned out the ferret cage.

During one of my afternoon surfing runs, I went down to Honeymoon Beach where two couple off of neighboring cruising boats were working on a dinghy up on the beach. I stopped and introduced myself and Amy and I were invited to join them for the launching of their newly constructed dinghy with high tide this afternoon.

At 3:30 pm, we loaded into our dinghy and went back in to the beach where Pete and his wife Sharon with the help of Dave and Judy pushed the dinghy into the water. Pete built a 12 foot fiberglass dink using the recovered base of a rigid inflatable. It wasn't very pretty, but the boat seems to float well on its lines and there is a ton of room in it.

We hung out for an hour sharing a cocktail with our new friends and swapping stories before we had to return to the boat and get ready for the Saturday night cookout and poker extravaganza. I made grilled buffalo wings and Amy supplied pickled carrots. The carrots scared the hell out of me just having them in the dinghy and I did not eat any.

Dinner was a quiet, but fun affair and around 7 pm we played cards. I'm sure my dear readers will be as disappointed as I when I tell you that I only managed to finish in second place. Linda from Lattittude beat me down and walked away with the top prize. Amy finished a respectable third.

We were back on the boat by 10 pm and Amy promptly turned in. Milo and I sat in the salon and split a diet Pepsi while we surfed the net checking out the weather situation. There are currently five areas of interest in the latest NOAA update, with three applying to us. Looks like more sitting and waiting.

Sunday, September 23, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

The rain showed up around 4 am this morning and with it came thirty knots plus of wind, so I spent the early morning hours camped out in the cockpit making sure our anchor didn't do anything stupid. I'm still a little gun shy after the shackle failure the other night.

Daylight found us happily bobbing on our anchor, so I crashed out in the salon until about 8 am when little wet weasel tongues urged me to get up and find something for the quadra-peds to eat. Amy joined us by 9 and she made us egg-a-moo-bee muffins for breakfast.

After the breakfast clean up, I tackled a couple of minor maintenance jobs and then jumped on my wind surfer to get a little sailing in. The wind was blowing almost 20 knots and I had my huge 7 meter sail up. I was screaming along at a fast clip when TWANG! KAPOOWEE! BANG! POP! the universal joint broke completely in two. Consequently, I ended up looking like human sling shot ammunition as I was flung a good ten feet through the air only to crash down in semi fetal/belly flop position.

For the record, the American judge gave me a 7.9 for style and a 10 for distance, but that damn French judge gave me a 2. Remember, the French are damaged people.

I was only 50 feet away from the boat when the u-joint let go, so I was able to doggy paddle the board back to the big boat without assistance. I have finally admitted defeat with the universal joint and I put all my pieces and parts away. I will be board less until the new joint arrives.

Since I couldn't use the surfer, I decided to take the board to the beach to repair a couple of nicks, scrapes, gouges and one hole that I got from hitting a dock (yes I hit a dock). I used one layer of woven roving and three layers of glass cloth to fix the hole and the rest I smoothed over with fiberglass jelly.

It took several hours to fair it all down, but after it sets up over night, the board will be as good as new, except for the ugly green color of my fiberglass patch. Oh well, looks aren't everything.

In between board work Amy and I listened to the Pittsburgh Steelers win their third in a row and then Carl Edwards win the Nascar race at Dover.

Around 6 pm, I cooked up one of the steaks Amy brought back with her from the states along with a Yellow tail Snapper from the freezer and two baked potatoes. We had way too much food and half of it ended up in the fridge as left overs.

We had a viewing of Six Days and Seven Nights with Harrison Ford and Anne Heche before turning in for the evening by 10 pm. See you tomorrow.

Monday, September 24, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

I went in to the beach at first light to check on my surf board. The glass repairs set up well over night and the break and dings are completely repaired. Yeah team!

I worked on sanding the patch down to make it conform to the shape of the board and then I used some more of the jelly to fair it out. The rain showed up shortly there after, which drove me back to the big boat.

Amy was awake by the time I got back, so we made breakfast tacos, much to Milo's delight. He loves tacos.

After breakfast, I loaded up trash and water jugs and headed in to town. On the way over, I made a pit stop by Kenny and Linda's to swap out some DVDs. We now have another 9 DVDs that I need to clone for our collection.

You know, you'd never get away with this in the states what with President Bush's ban on cloning. (Ha ha)

Things in town were pretty dead. A lot of the businesses are still closed. It seems like tourism is at it's slowest during the month of September, so lots of the businesses close down for the month. I swung by Eddie's Edgewater because I needed a good internet connection to upload a large file to my brother back in the states, but their internet was down. I secretly dropped off my trash in the dumpster behind the liquor store, grabbed some water from the dinghy dock and returned home.

The rain let up around noon and I went back in to sand on my board some more. Back on the boat we decided to go for a swim and then we got cleaned up and headed up to the Chat and Chill for a pre-poker night rum drink. We sat at the bar and talked to KB (the owner) for 20 minutes and then headed up to St. Francis for cards.

We had 11 players show up and when the dust settled, Team Dream Catcher came away with first and second place. Once it got down to just me and Amy left, we agreed just to call it a night rather than drag everything out. Together we netted 50 dollars of the 55 dollar pot and at the end of the night actually came out ahead by 25 bucks! Way to go team.

We got back to the boat by 10 pm and I made three mini pizzas as we were both starving. Milo managed to burn his little mouth again by biting the pizza when it was still too hot. It's times like these that make me wonder how ferrets survived as a species.

Post pizza we packed up the weasels and then turned in for the night

Tuesday, September 25, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

At poker last night, Speedo Ed let us know that he had organized a volley ball session this morning, so we were up and ready to go early. We joined Ed, Norm (Wind Minstrel), Dick (Mariah Joy) and Cavali House Bob for 5 games of three on three ball.

Considering none of us has played in two months, the games were surprisingly good. We all showed signs of rust, but the teams were pretty well matched. We played until 11 and then headed back to our boats. As a side note, we agreed to play again on Thursday morning. Hopefully we'll continue playing pretty regularly and we should all be ready when the cruising season begins.

Back on the boat, we took a swim to remove the sand and then made basil tomato linguine for an early lunch. Afterwards, I took my Ryobi sander to shore and finished work on my surf board. After an hour or so, I called the project complete. All we need now is some paint and it'll be as good as new.

Back on the boat, I stowed the surf board in it's upright seating position where it will stay until we get our package from Reggie Air.

It thundered and rained all day long, but we never got any serious wind, so it wasn't too bad. I spent the afternoon finishing off copying all of the movies we bummed from Lattittude and then during a brief lull in the rain, I went out to the reef to look for dinner. It was way too rough to hunt effectively, so I just let the dinghy drift while I took a quick peak.

You can imagine my surprise when I found this leviathan of the deep staring up at me as I floated by. I dove down and invited him over for cocktails and then when he wasn't looking I shot him in the head.

Back on the boat, I processed our catch and then we made a large Chef salad for dinner. Afterwards, we watched Mission Impossible 3 with Tom Cruise. It was pretty damn lame, but at least a lot of shit blew up, which is really the definition of a good movie in my book. Amy says I am an imbecile and I really need to grow up. Hmmm.

Post movie, we hopped online and checked the status of tropical storm Karen. Karen keeps heading towards us despite the NOAA wizards having said she will turn north at any minute for the last two days. As an interesting aside, I once had a girlfriend named Karen and while she too was a bitch from which there was no escape, she was also lazy and couldn't follow through on anything, so I'm not too worried about hurricane Karen.

Remember dear reader, we use nothing but the finest weather prediction tools here at Team Dream Catcher.

After the weather check we retired to our cabin accompanied by the weasels. They are apparently afraid of thunder and as such, they chose to hide under my pillow for the evening.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - Volley Ball Beach, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

The wind sprung up with the storms last night, so at first light we moved the boat to the more protected anchorage off of Volleyball Beach. Once the anchor was settled down I tried to make us breakfast blue berry waffles, but when I got out my waffle mix there were lots of little bugs doing some form of the back stroke through the flour mix. We instead resorted to the tried and true standard of grilled cheesies. For the record said bugs were escorted off the boat.

The rain stayed off and on all day. We made a trip in to town during a brief lull in the weather and Amy rode out to the airport to pick up a package from customs and I went to the Corner Laundry mat to do a load of laundry.

Afterwards, we met back up at the grocery store where we restocked all sorts of things, including waffle mix. With laundry, groceries, a package from home, and us, the dinghy was way full, but we managed to make it back across the harbour without any problems.

Back on board, we put groceries away and folded clean clothes. The remainder of the afternoon was spent reading books. Around 5 pm we took the weasels in to Chat and Chill to play on the picnic tables and in the sand. Speedo Ed's dog Jack was there and seemed to enjoy playing with the ferrets.

Milo spent most of his time with his head stuck in the sand while Mila tried to communicate through the use of some sort of sand script in which she uses all four of her legs at the same time to draw hieroglyphics. Unfortunately Amy and I don't speak weasel so her message went unread.

After the ferrets wore themselves out, we sat at the bar and talked with KB and then a group of 5 charterers that are sailing a 50 foot catamaran down to Panama. We were back on our boat by 8 pm for a steamed shrimp dinner before retiring for the evening with our books.