Everything in the Bahamas is expensive.  This box of crackers was $8.

Bill’s black eye was quite impressive although he said that it did not hurt.

When we woke up at Mile Hammock Bay, it was raining.  Rather than leaving in the rain, Bill made these cinnamon pecan pinwheels for our breakfast.

Greetings from our land home in Kingsport, Tennessee.  Bill and I arrived here Friday night, June 14.  Our land house seems to have fared okay without us, but I now have lots of projects here on my to-do list. 

Now, back to the description of our trip.

We left Brunswick, Georgia after breakfast on June 5.  The dredged channel from the harbor out to deep water in the Atlantic was long.  The shallow water along the Georgia coast extends miles out into the sea.  I felt like it took us hours and hours to finally reach the point where we could turn and head north.  Bill told me it was just two hours, but it was the sort of two long boring hours that seem like ten.  We motor sailed along the Georgia coast most of the day, but the wind picked up in the late afternoon, and we sailed on, flying both headsails and with one reef in the mainsail.

Just as it was getting dark, it began to drizzle rain.  The wind went behind us, and the sea was sloppy making the mainsail bang about.  Bill went forward to put a preventer on the boom, and somehow, he got hit in the face by a flapping genoa sheet.  His left eye was immediately bruised, swollen, and black.  Somehow, he did not lose his glasses overboard, but they were very bent.  I had been thinking we had been extremely lucky… with all the broken things on Irish Eyes, neither of us had been injured.  That thought came to a sudden end as Bill lay below on the settee with an ice pack on his injured eye.

We sailed or motored the rest of Wednesday.  Around Savannah, we had to dodge some ships, but nothing too exciting happened.  Wednesday turned to Thursday as we continued our trip staying 50 miles or so off the Carolina coast.  Bill was the chef on this part of our cruise.  The first night he made biscuits for country ham biscuits, and the second night he made individual meatball pastry pies.  I think he was bored and hungry on his watches and was dreaming up ways to use the remains of our food.

Finally, after almost forty-eight hours underway, we entered the Cape Fear River as the sun rose.  I was hoping we would stop at Carolina Beach, anchor there, and have a nice long nap.  No, that was not to be.  The captain went right past Carolina Beach and continued up the ICW heading to Mile Hammock Bay.  It is sixty miles from the Cape Fear River to Mile Hammock Bay.  That maded for an all-day trip.  A half mile before our destination, we crossed the New River as it flowed to the sea.  The crossing was an “ICW trouble spot”.  It was very shallow, and the printed charts were known to be wrong.  We arrived a little earlier than we expected, just after low tide, when the water was at its shallowest.  It had started raining hard, and it was foggy.  Thankfully, we made it across the trouble spot without touching the bottom, and we anchored in Mile Hammock Bay as guests of the United States Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune.  The rain continued to pour down.  It was an early to bed night followed by a late morning start for these two old and exhausted sailors.

We continued our trip north toward our slip in Northwest Creek Marina.  It rained on and off both Saturday and Sunday.  Because of the rainy weather, the weekend small boat traffic was not as bad as we had expected.  Sane people stayed home and dry.  We just motored on.

Our last night at anchor was spent in Cedar Creek.  It was a peaceful evening except for the buzzing of mosquitoes.  I was glad we had screens for our hatches and ports.  We were up and underway before 8am on Monday.  It rained a little on the three-hour trip up the Neuse River to Northwest Creek Marina, but we were tied in our slip and had our air conditioner installed and running by lunch time on Monday.  It was good to cool down and dry out the boat.  That afternoon as the air conditioner did its thing, we both had long showers at the marina and emerged as respectable humans (although humans with slightly pruney hands and feet) after months without a proper shower.

Over the next several days, we packed our car, cleaned the boat, fixed a few things, and were ready to drive to Kingsport on Friday.

This year’s trip was a challenge.  I was at times afraid we might not get the boat back to North Carolina until late summer.  The engine parts Bill ordered in Marsh Harbour on May 21 have not yet (as of today) arrived at the Marsh Harbour Boatyards.  If the epoxy glue had not stopped the engine's fuel leak, we would still be in the Bahamas waiting for repairs.  I would have been both hot and unhappy, and Bill would have been really bored.  Bill and I have not decided exactly how we are going to get all Irish Eyes’ parts mended, but it will all be done somehow.  Both of us are thankful we made it back home.

Now that we are here, we plan to spend the rest of our summer catching up with friends, hosting the grandchildren for a couple of weeks, and working on our land home.

James and Sandra Little flew down to George Town in the Exumas to join us and to watch the 66^th National Family Island Regatta.  We are just sitting in the stands between races enjoying a beer.

This is the Bahamian sloop New Legend sailing by behind our anchored boat.  You can see how much sail these boats carry.  To keep the boat upright, the crew must crawl out on two pries hanging out over the water.

As the day ends one last boat sails out into the sun.

On the last day of the regatta the Royal Bahamas Police Force Band put on their show.  They are something to see in tropical uniforms and leopard skin tunics.

There is as much to see below the water in the Bahamas as above.  It is hard to believe, but all three of the creatures are animals.

Last year the children and grandchildren spent a week with us in the Black Point settlement.  Well, this is the nearby White Point.  No one lives here.  It is just white sand beaches.

Sailing from Eleuthera to the Abacos we had two cruise ships pass just ahead of us.  Cruise ships are ugly, and the paint job does not improve things.  See what I mean?

Hello from Brunswick, Georgia.  It has been a very long time since I have written.  I am afraid I have not been a good correspondent on this trip, but I did not want to be too much of a whiner.

When I last left you, we were waiting for a visit from our friends James and Sandra Little.  They flew in a couple of days before the Family Islands Regatta began giving us time to check out George Town, walk on the Stocking Island beaches, and enjoy a few restaurant meals.  Mostly, we just hung out on Irish Eyes.  Once the races started, we managed to anchor in absolutely the best possible spot.  We were just off Volleyball Beach at the Chat N Chill restaurant with the race’s upwind turning mark off our stern.  When the race committee occasionally moved the mark away from us, it was still close enough to set down our drinks and run over in the dinghy for a closer view every time the fleet approached.  One time from aboard our boat, we could hear the calls of “starboard, starboard” before the loud crash of a collision between three racing boats just behind us.

For variety, we also took the dinghy to both the starting line and the finish line.  While most sailboat races start with the boats already underway, Bahamian races start with the boats anchored in a line.  When the starting gun is fired, all the boats pull up their anchor and raise their sails to get underway.  There are lots of opportunities for things to go wrong, sometimes dreadfully wrong.  We took the dinghy to the starting line for one of the races.  There was a crowd of dinghies and motorboats milling around behind the starting line, and we were about the smallest.  Feeling like a chihuahua among great danes and finding our position a little dangerous, we went back to Irish Eyes after the start to watch the rest of that day’s race.  Our venture to the finish line was a little more civilized, mostly because as each boat finished the crowd of spectators shrunk.  We watched each boat cross the line, we heard their supporters whoop and holler, and we saw them all take off to town to party.  We followed later.

The Regatta went from Wednesday to Saturday.  The final entertainment on Saturday evening was a parade by the Royal Bahamas Police Force Band.  We went into town to watch the parade, to have supper at one of the many temporary shacks selling food and booze, and to watch the closing ceremonies.

The band put on a great performance.  Sandra is a good photographer and got some wonderful pictures.  Supper was grilled chicken and pork eaten while sitting on the harbor wall.  The closing ceremony and awarding of prizes began just after we finished our supper.  Almost every government official in the Bahamas was there.  The Prime Minister was in the crowd, his deputy and the Governor General were on stage surrounded by a covey of departmental ministers, district governors, local council leaders, and prominent citizens.  Unlike the U.S., there was no security in sight.  The political speeches were, as usual, too long, but we liked watching the slightly intoxicated and delightfully happy winners collect their fabulous trophies.

The weather while the Littles were with us was great until their last full day when it got progressively cloudy.  We walked to the top of the Monument Hill on Stocking Island and along the beach on the Exuma Sound side of the island.  A couple we first met years ago had said that a snorkel along the rock wall at Monument Beach was not to be missed, so we went.  I’d describe it, but Gayle does a much better job on her web site, http://cruisingbiologists.com/monument-wall-george-town/ .  At 1:30 in the morning the long-awaited thunderstorm arrived (They invariably come when we would rather be sleeping.), and Bill caught enough rainwater to fill our tanks.  Monday morning, we motored across the harbor in the rain, then Bill ferried James and Sandra to shore to meet their taxi to the airport and begin their journey back to Kingsport.

While James and Sandra were with us, we had been monitoring the leak from the transmission.  It seemed to have stopped after Bill’s Loctite and silicone caulking fix.  Bill did notice a small diesel fuel leak from the engine, but it was minor.

We hung around George Town for a week in lousy weather, ready to leave.  There were rumors on Facebook and cautions on the morning radio net about the quality of the diesel fuel at the Shell service station.  While we had enough fuel to get to Staniel Cay, we wanted more in case they were sold out.  Bill took our three 5 gallon diesel jugs into town to buy fuel from the Esso dock (Yeah, it is still Esso there.), but they had none.  The Shell station said their fuel was fine, so he bought 15 gallons.  Back at the boat after adding the first 5 gallons to our tank, he found water in the bottom of the jug.  He added the other 10 gallons doing his best to leave the water behind.  We then circulated our fuel from the tank, through our Racor Aqua-Block filter, and back to the tank for 6 hours to remove the water.  All told we recovered about 3 ounces.  Bill added to our fuel tank a double dose of Biobor JF (a biocide) and another double dose of some $20/quart snake oil stuff he had bought that claimed to clean injectors, increase fuel lubricity, remove water, and dozens of other good sounding things.  It couldn't hurt, could it?  We planned to go north along a shorter route than usual because with our transmission problems we did not want to get too far from the Yanmar dealers in Nassau, Spanish Wells, and Marsh Harbour.  On Friday May 3 the weather cleared, and we sailed north to Galliot Cut and were anchored in time for sundowners.

Our next stop was a Big Farmers Cay.  In past years we had walked along the beaches and explored both a small creek and large cave.  This year, just above the high tide line, were four large “No Trespassing” signs and the creek entrance had been filled with sand.  The creek was interesting because the changes seemed natural, but the signs make us wonder what was happening on this island that was mostly populated by goats.

Farther north, we stopped at the south end of Hawksbill Cay.  We had not stopped there this year, and I always enjoy walking around this end of the island.  I spent a long time swimming in the sun warm water where a creek flowed out to the banks and watching a Reddish Egret walking along the rocky shore.  Bill walked across the island and found the largest float he had ever found.  At nearly 3 feet in diameter, he could not get his arms around it to pick it up.  Thankfully, he left it behind for others to enjoy.

Our last night in the Exumas was spent at Ship Channel Cay.  The rocks around our anchorage were described as a good snorkeling spot by Stephen Pavlidis.  He was right.  We saw all kinds of fish and other creatures.  Ship Channel Cay is Powerboat Adventure’s island base.  They bring tourists from Nassau to feed sharks and rays and to have lunch.  We had the fastest internet of our time in the Exumas while we were anchored at Ship Channel Cay.  Several years ago, we met the owner of Powerboat Adventures.  He told us the only way he could keep young staff was to have great internet.  We older cruisers enjoyed it as well.

The next two days were long days for us.  The first day we motor sailed from Ship Channel Cay to Royal Island; an all-day trip.  The second day was equally long as we sailed across the Northwest Providence Channel from Eleuthera to the Abacos.  We were making tracks north.  The first day we played tag with a thunderstorm and got a little wet.  The second day we played tag on the ocean with two cruise ships but managed to not collide with either of them.

Arriving in the Abacos through the Little Harbour Cut at supper time, we anchored behind Lynyard Cay; another island in the Bahamas that has sprouted No Trespassing signs in the last few years.  We could still walk along the nearby beaches but could no longer walk across the island to the ocean side.

Lynyard Cay gave us protection from the east wind, but over the next several days the wind moved first south then west.  We responded by moving to a spot in The Bight of Old Robinson for the south wind then to Snake Cay for the west then north wind.  Snake Cay is at the north end of the East Abaco Creeks National Park, and a cut between Snake Cay and Deep Sea Cay gives water access to a huge and shallow lagoon behind the cays.  The area is entirely undeveloped, and one of our guidebooks said it was great for dinghy exploring.  The current in the cut was very, very strong, but once inside, the lagoon was calm and pretty.  On our way back to Irish Eyes, we stopped at several small beaches just to see what was there.  All we found was plastic trash.  At our last beach, we failed to anchor the dinghy properly.  I looked back and saw it blowing away.  Bill had to run back down the beach then swim a couple of hundred yards to catch up with the dinghy.  It was a touch and go race for a while, but he eventually caught the wayward dinghy.

The weather was not pretty on May 15.  It was cloudy, and it rained off and on.  I baked bread while Bill tried to patch a leak in the floor of our dinghy.  Weeks before in George Town, Bill had given our can of expensive but out-of-date Hypalon glue to another cruiser in exchange for some freshly caught mahi.  That was OK because Bill had purchased a new can in Miami.  Unfortunately, the new can was for a PVC dingy, and our dinghy is Hypalon.  Bill did not realize that the new can was the wrong stuff until we discovered the leak in our dinghy’s inflatable floor.  He kept busy one whole day trying different types of tape and glue to stop our leak.  His fourth attempt produced the final solution -- superglue under a Hypalon fabric patch pressed firmly in place with two c-clamps and two pieces of wood while the glue set.

The wind picked up and become easterly, so we moved a bit north and anchored in a calm spot off Tahiti Beach.  That put us in dinghy range of both White Sound and Hope Town.  One day we had lunch at the Sea Spray Resort in White Sound then walked to a tiny grocery store for orange juice and a tomato.  The next day we went to Hope Town to look around, have lunch, and do a little shopping.  Hope Town now has a swimming pool.  A teacher holding an umbrella over her head for protection from the blazing sun herded her towel carrying charges down the lane from school to pool.  The children would run ahead passing us, the teacher would make them stop for her to catch up, we would pass the children, and the process would repeat.  I enjoyed talking to the kids every time we passed each other.

Remember the fuel leak I mentioned a few paragraphs back and remember the $20/quart snake oil stuff that promised to clean fuel systems?  Well, it apparently cleaned up around our very minor fuel leak and transformed it from something you could only smell into a steady drip, drip, drip from the top of our engine’s high-pressure fuel injection pump.  By the time we realized the seriousness of the situation it was after 4pm on Friday, and the telephone at the Marsh Harbour Boatyard went unanswered.

We needed the engine not only to move the boat but also to charge our batteries and to cool our refrigerator and freezer.  We planned to motor the two hours to Marsh Harbour on Saturday morning soaking up the leaking fuel with paper towels and anchor near the marinas in case we needed to move into a slip for electricity.  When we tried to start the engine, it would not start.  Where the fuel had been leaking out of the running engine, air had leaked in with the engine off.  Bill bled the air out of the fuel pump, and we got going.  We made it to Marsh Harbour completely soaking four paper towels and leaving a puddle of fuel under the engine.  Bill cleaned up the mess, studied our engine’s shop manual, and read things on the internet.  It seemed a copper washer in the discharge check valve of one of the injections pump’s three cylinders had failed.  Sounds easy enough, change the washer.  Bill did not have the washer nor the tools to work on the pump, and the warnings in the shop manual about unskilled work on the pump sounded serious.  Those of you who know Bill well can imagine how frustrating this was for him.  We hung our solar panel over the side of the boat to give it more sun and reduced our engine run time for the fridge to an hour a day even though it meant that our frozen food would thaw.  (We got to eat steak twice.)  We waited for Monday.

Over the weekend we had several people stop to talk to us.  One was a French Canadian who was sailing his boat, Argo IV, by himself.  He had Googled Irish Eyes because he liked the way she looked and apparently found my blog and our position reports.  When he came over in his dinghy, he called us by name and knew all about us.  If the guy had not been so enthusiastic, honest, and nice, he would have been creepy.  Jumping ahead a couple of weeks, while we were sailing about 60 miles off the Florida coast, the Coast guard asked over the VHF radio if anyone has seen Argo IV.  Bill responded and said we had seen him in Marsh Harbour.  The Coast Guard was only interested if we had seen him in the last six hours.  We do not know what had happened.

On Monday morning, Bill called the boatyard and twice left a message for the mechanic to call us back.  We waited all day and never had a return call.  Tuesday morning, Bill walked over to the yard and found that it would take two to three weeks to get the necessary parts to repair our engine.  The mechanic was to be “off island” in three weeks for two weeks.  It looked like we would have to spend six weeks in Marsh Harbour babying the engine enough to keep our food cold and our batteries charged.  I was ready to jump ship and fly home.  Bill made a second trip to the boatyard.  He ordered the parts in case we needed them.  He stopped at the auto parts store and bought a can of spray brake cleaner, a set of small wire brushes, a set of dental picks, and some epoxy glue for metal.

It took two applications of the epoxy, but the leak was reduced from a drip to a seep.  The engine started just fine.  It was time to head north stopping somewhere between Ft Pierce and New Bern depending on how the leak progresses.  The first day we got to Bakers Bay on Great Guana Cay.  The leak was OK.  The second day we got to Allans-Pensacola Cay.  The leak was OK.  The third day we got to Great Sale Cay.  The leak was OK.  Things were looking up.  The weather forecast was good for the next three days as far north as the St Mary’s River entrance at Fernandina Beach Florida.  North of that the wind was to be 25 to 30 knots with the chance of thunderstorms.  We headed for the St Mary’s River 300 nautical miles away.

 

The wind was very fickle.  At times, usually at night, it blew 20 knots.  At other times we did not have any wind at all.  The engine started every time we needed it.  One evening the engine seemed to vibrate more than usual at the start but calmed down as we ran it.  On Wednesday May 29, after about 57 hours underway, we were anchored in Cumberland Sound.  We cleared via an app on my cell phone.  We never spoke to or saw a single human at Customs and Border Protection.

Thursday morning Bill went swimming and replaced all the zincs on the bottom of the boat including the one on the propeller.  That seemed to stop the engine vibration.  We decided to move up the river to the town of St Marys, Georgia to wait for favorable offshore weather farther north.  We enjoyed the little town of St Marys.  We enjoyed the Submarine Museum, the National Park Service Cumberland Island Museum, a bookstore, and the restaurants in town.  All were air conditioned.  Bill walked the 7-mile round trip to Winn-Dixie for groceries and came back dripping sweat.

For a change of scenery we moved to Cumberland Island for a day, then for diesel fuel we motored up to Jekyll Island then Brunswick, and tomorrow (weather permitting) we’ll resume our trip north to New Bern.

Stay safe and well.

See Bill’s newly found sunglasses and his small mooring buoy.  These are the sorts of things he finds.  It is just trash that washed up on the beach.

This little sand dollar had a garden of small green plants growing on it when it washed ashore among a bunch of sea grass.  I thought it was sort of cute and threw it back into the water before the garden dried in the sun.

Bill found these fishing net floats on the beach at Normans Cay.  He is proud of them because they match.  It looks like they will be coming home with us.

This is our sign that we leave on top of Boo Boo Hill at Warderick Wells in the Exumas.  Each year we add another year to the list.  You can see the freshly carved MMXIX.

The Comma Sandbar emerges from the water at low tide west of Cave Cay only to be drowned an hour or so later.  Even when dry it is completely surrounded by water.

Wouldn’t you know it, Cave Cay has caves.  We took our dinghy into this one to see the limestone rock formations.  The roof is perhaps 15 feet overhead.

Greetings from George Town, Exuma.  It has been a long time since I last wrote.  I seem to have been on “Island Time” and have not gotten much accomplished since I left you all with our boat in Palm Cay Marina near Nassau waiting for our transmission to return.

On March 20 Brad, the Yanmar mechanic in Nassau, called to say our rebuilt transmission was ready to be installed.  Bill and I did a little happy dance.  We were more than ready to leave Palm Cay Marina.  It was a great place, but we did not come to the Bahamas to stay in a marina.  The transmission was back in the boat that day right after lunch.  We started the engine and tugged on the dock lines.  Forward worked.  Reverse worked.  Brad told us Tiffany would call us with the bill.  Ahhh.  The repair bill.  We sort of thought there would be one, but we had no idea how much it would be.

The bill came by email the next afternoon.  We paid it with my Visa card over the phone after calling the credit union to warn them of a large foreign charge coming their way.  Since Bill lost his wallet, my Visa card is the only card we have.  I was scared that Visa would see the suspicious charge and cancel the card leaving us stranded.  After paying the bill it was too late to leave Palm Cay, so we hung around for one more night.

The next morning, we were the first ones in the office when the door opened.  The Palm Cay Marina staff gave us some generous discounts from their listed rates for our nineteen day stay.  With that bill paid and with my credit card still working, we untied the dock lines and sailed the 31 nautical miles to Highbourne Cay.  We arrived and found a good spot to anchor in the lee of the island.  It was great to have Irish Eyes swinging with the wind and to have a nice cool breeze moving through the boat.

We spent several days anchored at Highbourne Cay watching the mega-yachts come and go.  While the weather during our stay was windy and cool, we did get to explore some of the beaches on the island before moving Irish Eyes to the north end of Norman’s Cay.  There, we explored a large sandbar and walked on the nearby beaches of Normans Cay and Saddle Cay.  Out Island Adventures had a dock with buildings and a tiki bar on Saddle Cay.  In previous years we have seen their high-speed motorboats bringing lots of folks from Nassau for a fun daytrip to Exumas.  This year it all stood silent and looked abandoned.  We do not know what happened.

As is typical for the Bahamas in the early spring, a cold front from the US was to pass over us bringing some showers and strong west wind.  In anticipation we moved into the Norman’s Cay Cut for better protection from the wind.  The cut is the channel between Normans Cay to the north and Wax Cay to the south.  It is the water passage between the Bahama Banks to the west and the Exuma Sound to the east.  It is narrow and twisting making it hard for the wind to raise any dangerous waves.  The wind did blow, but we were still able to walk along the beaches.  Bill found five bright yellow football-size Styrofoam fishnet floats while I found several pretty shells.  We also walked all around the new marina that is being built on Normans Cay.  Only one yacht and six jet skis were tied to its newly installed docks, but there was a private jet at the end of its 5000 ft runway.  When finished the marina will be a grand place.

Our next stop was one of my favorite uninhabited places in the Bahamas, Shroud Cay.  We anchored at the north end of the island.  Shroud Cay is part of Exuma Land and Sea Park.  So, it is a no take zone, and all I could do is look at the shells on the beach.  Bill could collect and remove all the plastic trash he wanted.  A system of creeks fills the entire center of Shroud Cay, with branches running from the Bahama Banks side to the Exuma Sound side.  It was, as always, beautiful.  The creeks were filled with dark turtles swimming in the baby blue water as it passed through the green mangroves to the white beaches on the Sound side.  We took a circle tour through the creeks and walked along two of the several beaches.

The next morning, we walked up a short trail over a rocky ridge to the northernmost Exuma Sound beach.  It was just breathtaking.  I must admit that I moaned and groaned while walking on the rocky bits of trail, but it was worth the effort.  Here, Bill’s beach trash finds included an almost new pair of Oakley sunglasses.  Unfortunately, they are over-the-counter sunglasses and not of much use to either of us.

After a few days at Shroud Cay, we made the long trip from Shroud Cay to Hawksbill Cay, about 5 miles.  We took the dinghy around to the north end of the island to visit the sandflats there.  I walked all over the flats discovering some Wilson’s Plovers nesting in the dried seaweed above the high tide line.  Squawking loudly, they were obviously not as happy to see me as I was to see them.  Bill walked over to a sound side beach and found lots of good things.  His best find was a GoPro camera.  It was buried in the sand with just the end of the attached handle sticking out.  Getting the sand out of the cracks and crevices of the waterproof camera and getting the camera open entertained Bill for days.  He finally got the doors to the battery and memory card spaces to open.  The only pictures on the micro SD card were a couple of very short videos of someone snorkeling.  They were taken a year ago, so the camera was probably lost when it was new.  I was afraid the pictures would be of someone’s beach wedding or some other significant event, and we would be searching for the owner of the camera.  On our way back to Irish Eyes, we saw five large sea turtles slowly swimming in the warm shallow water.  What a great day!

We had been without cell phone coverage or internet access for over a week.  It was time to head to Warderick Wells, the headquarters of Exuma Land and Sea Park.  The park office used to sell internet access, but we discovered they no longer do that.  The staff had too many complaints on the speed and reliability of the satellite service, so they stopped selling it.  Oh well, we would have to be out of touch a bit longer.  We picked up a mooring ball at the Emerald Rock mooring field and spent a lovely few days swimming, exploring the beaches, and of course, retrieving our sign from BooBoo Hill.  Leaving a sign on top of the pile is supposed to bring good luck to cruisers.  We made our sign in 2008 from an old board we found on the beach and have engraved a new date in it each year since.  It is hard to believe that the piece of wood has survived outdoors this long.  Although it was hard to find an unused spot to carve the year, MMXIX, Bill managed.  We walked to the top of the hill and placed the sign once again in the pile.

Our next stop was Sampson Cay.  It is really pretty at Sampson.  In the past the cay had a public marina with a store, fuel, laundromat, bar, and restaurant.  Several years ago, the owner closed the island to the public.  Cruisers can still anchor off the island.  They are not allowed to wander ashore on the trails or anywhere else above the high tide line.  Here we at long last had cell service and spent the remainder of the day doing internet stuff.  Bill had a list of things he wanted to order for James and Sandra Little to bring when they come to visit.  I had grandchildren to catch up with.  The weather was beautiful, and we explored the area both by dinghy and by walking on the beaches.  I was going to have a relaxing swim one hot afternoon.  I jumped in the water off the side of Irish Eyes.  When I came up and opened my eyes, there was a nurse shark underneath the boat looking straight up at me.  I was up the ladder and out of the water like a shot.  There are places in the Bahamas where folks swim with nurse sharks.  Not me!  I do not care if nurse sharks are not supposed to be aggressive.  A nurse shark is still a big wild shark with a big shark mouth full of big shark teeth.  I don’t even like the idea.

With still another cold front coming and our spot at Sampson Cay exposed to the expected west wind, we moved about two miles south to Staniel Cay and anchored east of the famous Thunderball Grotto.  Staniel Cay has several stores and the famous Staniel Cay Yacht Club.  Bill and I went into town by dinghy and had a cheeseburger in paradise at the Yacht Club.  We walked the couple of blocks to the Pink Pearl Supermarket (It is about 20 x 40 feet inside.) for the few groceries we needed.  The wind increased over the next few days and the sky was dark and stormy to the north of us.  We finally got a quarter inch of rain during the night on April 10.  Bill filled two five-gallon jugs of rainwater.  The front was not nearly as bad as had been forecasted.

While we were anchored at Staniel Cay, Bill discovered oil in our bilge. After some investigation he found it was coming from the newly repaired transmission.  Bummer.  Bill added transmission fluid, and we set off for Black Point on Friday, April 12.  Black Point has the best laundromat in the Exumas mostly because its windows have the best view to absorb as the clothes go ‘round.  After our anchor was down, I gathered our dirty laundry and we set off for the laundromat.  About half way there the dinghy outboard quit.  Bill could not get it restarted.  The outboard had been persnickety for a couple of days.  It did not run quite right.  Fortunately, on this trip we were not too far from Irish Eyes, and Bill rowed us back.  I managed to latch onto the boat before we blew past our home.  Turns out the pickup tube, the tube that sucks gas from the bottom of the tank, had fallen off.  Bill had to drain the tank, retrieve the tube, and reattach it with a hose clamp so it would not come off again.  By this time the laundromat was closed.  Oh well, it was then happy hour at Scorpios.  We enjoyed double rum punches and fried grouper fingers for supper.  Several other cruisers were at Scorpios along with some local guys.  We talked to the locals about the Family Islands Regatta and were told we need to root for their boat, Red Stripe.  We traded tales with the other cruisers.

On Saturday morning the laundromat was again open.  Bill took me and the dirty clothes over to shore.  In talking to the young man working in the laundry, I learned Mr. Adderley who owed the Black Point grocery store had died.  Mr. Adderley had numerous children and grandchildren.  There are pictures of all the children on the wall in his store.  He loved to tell his customers all their names, where they lived, and what they did for a living.  I always enjoyed talking to him.

James and Sandra Little were due to arrive in George Town on Monday, April 22 to join us for the week-long Family Island Regatta.  There were two different forecasted good weather days for us to go to George Town; the Tuesday before they were to come and the day before their arrival.  Our transmission was still leaking oil making a sooner trip a far better choice.  It was time for us to make the trip to George Town.  We would make the trip in two hops stopping at Cave Cay along the way.  Bill refilled the transmission with oil and put a paper towel pad underneath it to catch the leak.  There was not enough wind to sail, so we motored to the north end of Cave Cay leaking transmission fluid all the way.

We had anchored near Cave Cay in the past but never in the spot near the landing strip on the island.  It was low tide just as we settled in.  We took a long dinghy ride to the comma shaped sand bar west of our anchorage.  It was a lovely place, a long and narrow spot of white sand rising from the blue water, but this year we did not find many shells.  There were lots of birds hanging out on the bar who were not at all happy to see us.  Just as we were leaving for Irish Eyes, the first of the tour boats arrived at the sandbar.  We now know why there were no shells.

In the afternoon we went over to the beach in front of Irish Eyes.  The bank side beach was narrow with a salt pond between it and the rocky shore on the Exuma Sound side of the island.  It was a very interesting place with lots of shells.  We had seen a tour boat go toward the beach just south of us.  They curiously spent a lot of time there but did not land the boat.  We decided to investigate after they left and found the shallow warm water cove filled with turtles and with a large cave in the limestone shore that we could enter with the dinghy.

Bill cleaned up the transmission fluid leak and added more oil in preparation for the thirty mile trip to George Town.  In the morning we did not have much wind, but the sky was ominous.  A long band of dark clouds was just to the north of us as we left Cave Cay and entered the Exuma Sound through Galliot Cut.  The clouds kept getting closer until finally they were on top of us.  The wind increased and swung to the east which made it easy to sail.  The trip ended up being a nice fast sail in calm water, and the black clouds just went away.  Our anchor was down at Monument Beach in the George Town harbor long before happy hour.

Bill emailed Brad a description and some photos of the transmission. They talked on the phone and came up with a repair plan.  Bill stayed behind and worked on the transmission while I hitched a ride into George Town with our friends Kevin and Chris aboard their boat, Aprés Ski, for a grocery and liquor store trip.  I even got my hair cut in town.  Bill, our palm tree mechanic, crawled into the engine compartment and worked for a day and a half.  He reattached the coupling flange to the output transmission sealing the joint with the shaft with silicone caulking, and he glued the big nut which holds the flange in place with red Loctite glue.  The transmission has been now refilled with oil for a day and does not (yet) leak, but we have not used the engine.  

We have had wind for a couple of days and a thunderstorm with rain last night.  Our water tanks are full, and we are waiting for James and Sandra to arrive tomorrow.  The locals have been building their temporary shacks in town to sell food and drink for next week’s regatta.  It should be a blast…Happy people, food, booze, and sailboat races.

A Blessed Easter to you all.

The Roosevelt theater is closed and abandoned, but the wall has the happiest “Welcome to Miami Beach” mural.  We were happy to be there, too.

The red line is our course from the south end of Key Biscayne, across the Gulf Stream, around the north end of Bimini, and across the shallow banks to Morgan’s Bluff.  The green line shows our plan to sail to New Providence’s West Bay, anchor there for the night, then sail to Highborne Cay the next morning.  The plan did not happen.

The big piece of metal is the coupling flange that fell off our transmission’s output shaft.  It is about 4 inches across.  The little thing is the nut that should have held it on the shaft.  It unscrewed.

Our chart plotter draws what it calls a “breadcrumb” that shows where we have gone.  Here we are leaving Morgan’s Bluff under sail on the zigzag course tacking back and forth as we sail into the wind.  Then, the straight part is where the transmission temporarily re-learned how to do forward letting us motor the rest of the way to New Providence Island.  The crossed lines of the cursor show where we anchored for the night.  The numbers are the water depth in meters.  2000 meters is about a mile and a quarter.

This picture from our chart plotter shows our route the next day as we sailed to Palm Cay Marina.  If we were to zoom in on the chart plotter, you would see many, many more little crosses indicating coral heads and rocks.

Sailing into Palm Cay Marina with an engine that would only do neutral and reverse, the lady on the radio said, “Go to pier 3, slip 15.”  One red arrow shows the route; the other shows our boat in its slip.  It is not something you would want to do.

Safely in our slip, and after a couple of drinks, we could appreciate our surroundings.  The marina is great.  The grounds crew works constantly keeping it that way.

Hello from Palm Cay Marina on New Providence Island in the Bahamas.

Yes, we are in the Bahamas in a marina.  It’s not our usual thing, but here we are.  The transmission on our engine failed, so here we wait for it to be repaired.

Bill and I spent two weeks in Miami Beach shopping, eating out, getting our second shingles shot, and just walking around in both Miami Beach and in midtown Miami.  Bill’s longest expedition was a solo Uber trip to the Sam’s Club in Doral to get a battery to replace the boat battery that failed on the trip down.  Our longest expedition together was a bus and train trip to Coconut Grove to visit the West Marine store where Bill wondered around for an hour looking at boat stuff.  We then walked to Home Depot where he bought some stainless steel thingies.  Hot from the walking in the sun, we had a nice lunch at Berries Restaurant… not outside on the porch with the tourists, but inside with the much-appreciated air-conditioned coolness.  Before returning to our boat, we checked out the Dinner Key Mooring Field, but decided that our spot anchored off Miami Beach was both better, and free.

It takes us two and a half to three days to travel from Miami to the Exumas.  A suitable window was to open on February 28.  It was boat stocking time.  Bill filled the boat’s fuel tank to the brim, tied three 5 gal jugs of diesel and a jug of gasoline on the deck, topped off the water tanks, and went to buy tonic water and beer.  He dropped me off at the police dock to walk to Publix to buy food.  When he came back to pick me up and was stacking my bags on our hand cart, he grabbed his back pocket and said, “Darn (not really), I’ve lost my wallet.”  He had.  Gone were his credit cards, driver’s license, medical cards, some cash, his bus pass, and other things.  Oh well.  Just cancel the credit cards and go to the Bahamas.

We motored south through our last draw bridge on the Intracoastal Waterway, past Miami, and onward to the south end of Key Biscayne to anchor outside No Name Harbor for a peaceful evening before our coming early morning departure.

We were up at 3, the anchor was up at 4, and we were underway in the dark heading for Morgan’s Bluff on Andros Island.  The trip to Morgan’s Bluff was expected to take about thirty hours.  It was a little rolly in the Gulf Stream with a light NE breeze.  By the time we were in sight of Bimini, the sea calmed down, the wind picked up, and we turned the engine off and sailed across the Great Bahama Bank.   I think this was our fastest trip across the Gulf Stream.

During the night, the wind went ahead of us and pretty much died.  Bill started the engine about 2am.  We saw the lights of boats both coming our way and going the other way.  While Bill was on watch, he had a bit of a bother with a ship that did not seem to see our lights.  Bill shone a flashlight on our sails.  The ship lit us up with its searchlight and turned slightly to the right to avoid us.

We arrived at Morgan’s Bluff around 9:00 am.  There was just one other sailboat anchored in the harbor.  There was a cargo ship tied up to the dock and unloading, so the customs and immigration people were already in Morgan’s Bluff.  We launched the dinghy, and Bill went ashore to clear us into the Bahamas.  It did not take him long.  We paid for our cruising permit and were given permission to stay in the Bahamas until June 30.

We put the dinghy and its motor back on the deck, raised the anchor, and departed on what we expected to be a 30 mile sail to New Providence Island where we would anchor for the night.  We motored out of the harbor and raised the sails.  I noticed that the engine did not seem to be pushing us.  A quick check showed that we could not motor either forward or backward.  This time both of us said, “Darn" (again, not really).  We sailed back into the harbor and anchored under sail.  It was tense.  There was a lot to do in a short time, and only one chance to get it right, and we did.

In the engine compartment, Bill discovered that the forward flange of the coupling between the transmission and the propeller shaft had slipped off the transmission’s output shaft.  The engine and the propeller were no longer hooked together.  Checking his books, Bill found that the flange was held to the transmission with a big nut that needed two special tools to tighten it securely.  Well, guess what we didn’t have.  In addition, without the flange in place all the oil had drained out of the transmission.  Great.  Bill called the Yanmar dealer in Nassau.  A mechanic named Brad said to smear blue Loctite (a special nut glue that we luckily did have) on the threads then tighten the nut as well as we could.  Bill did, then he refilled the transmission.  During the hours he worked, other boats came into the harbor and anchored around us.  We tested the transmission in reverse by pulling on the anchor line with the reversing engine.  It worked.  We were scared to try forward.  The other anchored boats were too close.

We could not stay in Morgan’s Bluff.  The wind was forecast to change to north in a few days, and the harbor, open to the north, would not be safe.  Besides, there was no one in Morgan’s Bluff to work on our problem.  So, we slept.  In the morning we raised the anchor and tried to motor out of the harbor.  We had no forward.  We re-anchored and thought about it.  We could not stay; we had to leave.  Our best option was to sail to New Providence Island.  The harbor at Nassau on the north side of the island would be too crowded, unfamiliar, and current ridden for us to safely enter, so Palm Cay Marina on the southeast corner where we fixed our fuel tank last year would be our best place to go.  Bill raised our sails, I steered the boat, we threaded our way around the other anchored boats, and we left Morgan’s Bluff behind.

The wind outside the harbor was light and coming in the exact direction that we wanted to go.  To sail into the wind, we had to tack.  We sailed first to the left of the wind, then we turned and sailed to the right of the wind.  It meant that the 30 mile straight line trip would be a 50 mile zigzag trip, and with the light wind it would be 3 in the morning before we would be in water shallow enough to anchor and sleep.  Oh well, we would do what we needed to do.  From time to time we started the engine and tried to motor.  For whatever reason, by late afternoon our transmission re-learned how to do forward.  We dropped the sails and motored the rest of the way to the southwest corner of New Providence where we anchored in the dark.

In the morning we tried the motor, but the transmission had once again forgotten forward.  So, it was sailing time again.  We had rain, rocks, and coral heads to contend with as we first tacked then later sailed as close to the wind as we could to the Palm Cay Marina entrance channel.  We lowered the sails, turned on the engine in case we needed reverse, and let the wind push us into the marina.  Inside the marina we had to make a left turn between two docks then a right turn into our slip.  With the help of a skilled dock hand, we managed to get the boat tied in the slip without hitting another boat, without either of us getting hurt, and (believe it or not) without any angry words between us.  Whew.

A few salty sailors will say all this maneuvering under sail was a piece of cake.  I very strongly disagree.  I hope and pray I never have to do any of it again!

Bill called Brad on Monday morning to ask him to come and look at our transmission.  Brad and another mechanic, Martin, could not come until Tuesday, but they were here by 9:30am and went straight to work.  They had the transmission out of the boat by noon.  We decided to order a new transmission from Yanmar in the states.  Unfortunately, Brad discovered that the transmission was no longer available.  He came back Wednesday morning, got the old one, and took it to the shop to see about repairing it.  Thursday, Brad called and said the needed parts for the transmission were available in Georgia.  We agreed to expedited shipping --- Adairsville in Georgia to St Pete in Florida then on to Nassau.  We gave him copies of our USCG vessel documentation and our Bahamas cruising permit in hopes of avoiding import duties.  We’ll see.  In the meantime, we wait.

Today, we have been in this marina for two weeks.  It is a very nice place.  It is safe, the restaurant and the café both have good food, there are showers, and a laundry.  The grounds are perfectly maintained, and the folks here are friendly.  The weather has been beautiful, some days windy, some days not, and it is warm.  Bill is doing projects on the boat. I am getting lots of knitting accomplished, and I am reading through my Kindle library.  I doubt I will run out of yarn, and I can order more Kindle books anywhere.

Hopefully, we will get the transmission repaired, and we will soon be out of here and beach walking.