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.

Our old patched fuel tank is on the left, and the new on the right.  The new boards in the dock replaced a section crushed by a sailboat during hurricane Florence.  Our little Honda generator in the distance gives us electricity because the real electricity has not yet been repaired.

Irish Eyes is hanging in the Travelift slings at Sailcraft Services.  We had her hauled out to inspect and clean the bottom before setting off for Florida.

The Waccamaw River north of Georgetown, SC is a pretty place with cypress and gum trees growing out of the still brown water.

In Beaufort, SC we had to wait almost three hours for the Lady’s Island Swing Bridge to open for us.  They give priority to the cars.  It was almost dark before they finally opened to let us through.

We spent one night in the Marineland Marina in Florida.  The change in the trees from South Carolina’s Waccamaw River to here is striking.

These are two pictures of the temporary bridge on the Southern Boulevard in Palm Beach.  It is near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.  In the first picture the bridge is closed and in the second it is open.  It is quite a contraption.  It clangs, bangs, and creaks as it opens and closes.

We bought bananas in Vero Beach, and Bill fixed us banana tarts, juice, and tea for breakfast.

Hello from Miami Beach.

We enjoyed both our Christmas together and our children and grandchildren’s New Year’s visit.  After they left, it was time to think about leaving home for the trip south.  We had already had snow… nine inches of the four-letter word… that was enough of that!  After packing our car with everything Bill thought we might need plus my clothes, we left for New Bern, NC on January 11.

The first thing we did when we arrived in New Bern, was to get the Honda generator out of the car and started.  Florence had left our dock without electricity or water.  The generator gave us electricity for heat, and a motley collection of collapsible water jugs, a dock cart, and a trip to the marina’s wrecked laundry gave us water.  Thankfully, the sailboats that were resting on top of the dock after Florence had been removed, and our dock was repaired and once again walkable.  The marina staff, faced with a herculean task, had been working hard to get everything back in pre-storm condition.  Hopefully, they will be finished when we get back.

Some of you may remember that our boat’s aluminum fuel tank developed a leak last year, and that two good palm tree mechanics (Bill and I) had repaired the tank in the Bahamas with epoxy resin.  Not completely trusting our repair, Bill ordered a new tank.  Although delivered late, it was waiting for us when we arrived in New Bern.  It was perfect.  We installed it, took the old one to the recycling center, and cleaned up the resulting chaos in the boat.

It was cold in New Bern.  One morning our thermometer showed 34 degrees inside the boat.  We had lots of blankets and a 12V ElectroWarm bunk heater, so our nights were warm even without the generator running.  On the coldest morning, Bill, the tough one, went outside, started the generator, and went to take a shower.  I got out from under all our blankets, started the electric heater, and went back under the covers.  The boat warmed up quickly, and I could at last venture out of my warm bed.

Bill worked on boat projects while I shopped for all the things we either forgot to bring or needed to buy.  Some things I bought from the stores in town, and the others Amazon delivered to the marina.

With 80% of our To-Do List accomplished, we said, “Enough”, and took Irish Eyes to Sailcraft Services in Oriental, NC for a quick haul out, underwater inspection, and bottom cleaning.  We also had them re-machine the drive pulley for the refrigeration system and install the last three folding steps on the mast.  Those three steps alone would have taken Bill and me a whole day to do, but they knocked out the job in under an hour.  In less than 24 hours and with only little damage to a Visa card, we were away and headed south.

The weather forecast was for a gale to pass over the NC coast.  We elected to go a very short distance and anchored in Adams Creek near the west shore to wait out the southwesterly blow.  And, blow it did.  We had a rocky night, but by late in the afternoon on January 25 things were back to normal.

The next morning was our coldest morning.  The condensation inside the boat was frozen, and the deck outside was slippery with a heavy frost.  With lots of layers; two pairs of long underwear, two pair of pants, probably four shirts, a down coat, a balaclava, a woolly cap, gloves, chemical hand warmers, and (for me) wonderful fuzzy lined UGG boots, both of us were warm even outside in the open cockpit.  Inside the boat our “bus heater” kept the interior toasty using the engine’s heat.  That was great because when we stopped to anchor, the boat’s interior was always cozy and dry.  While the boat cooled during the night, we always ate our breakfast quickly in the morning and got underway again.  If Bill had his way, we would travel from 6 in the morning to 7:30 at night.  I instead set the schedule at absolutely, positively no more than 7:30 to 5:30, and frequently I allowed less.

We stopped for one night at the Myrtle Beach Yacht Club to visit my sister and brother-in-law and to have dinner at their house.  He is French and a chef, and thus a French Chef, and she has been his understudy for years.  It is always the best meal of the trip.  Besides that, we got a real shower at the yacht club.  Real showers are few and far between on these trips.

Three days later, after crossing the Charleston Harbor, we arrived at the Wappoo Creek Bridge.  It had a new opening schedule, and we had a forty-five minute wait.  The US Coast Guard seized the opportunity to board us for a safety inspection.  Both the young officers were friendly and polite.  They did not find anything amiss on Irish Eyes, but before the bridge eventually opened, they returned to retrieve a pair of obviously expensive sunglasses one of them had left behind.

Our next bridge experience occurred at the Lady’s Island Bridge in Beaufort, SC.  That bridge also has a new opening schedule.  It does not open from 3pm till 6pm.  Unfortunately, we arrived at 3:15.  We anchored the boat for the long wait.  At 6 as the sun set and the nearby Beaufort City Marina closed, the bridge finally opened.  We went through and anchored in the shallows beyond the city marina’s mooring field.  It was pitch dark.  Beaufort, SC did not seem as boater friendly as it had been in the past.

The farther south we got the warmer the temperatures became.  We made it through all the Georgia shallow spots including Hell Gate and the Creighton Narrows without a problem.  Bill, once again the tough one, steered us through the notoriously shallow Little Mud River and across the Altamaha Sound in the pouring rain while I stayed dry below and encouraged him.  We anchored near Lanier Island, Georgia for a couple of hours while the tide rose before heading off for Jekyll Creek, probably the shallowest of the Georgia spots, at high tide.  We made it through Jekyll Creek and anchored in dark.  Bill put up our TV antenna, and we watched the Super Bowl.  I am not sure why he did it; neither one of us is a football fan, and the game was a near scoreless bore.

On Friday, February 8, we arrived in Vero Beach, Florida.  Bill had ordered boat parts and other things from Amazon, Defender, and McMaster-Carr, so we should have had had packages waiting.  Wrong.  He mis-addressed some of things and never actually hit the send key on others.  Some went to Kingsport, and others were never sent.  We ended up getting only a spare bilge pump, a winch handle, and new flags.  To avoid the South Florida weekend small boat traffic, we decided to stay until Monday.  We used the down time to take showers with unlimited hot water, go grocery shopping, do our laundry, and enjoy a couple of restaurant meals.  Sunday afternoon we went to the nearby Vero Beach Art Museum.  Displayed among the paintings and other art objects was a beautiful hand embroidered bed covering.  Bill said I should make one too.  I do not think I have enough years left to take on that project.  I’ll just knit.

After Vero Beach it was one day to Hobe Sound where we anchored behind Jupiter Island, its golf courses, and Tiger Wood’s house.   When we shut the engine down, Bill found one of our three house batteries hot, hissing, and smelly.  He pronounced it dead and disconnected it from the other two.  The next day we took the boat into the north end of Lake Worth to go to the nearby Palm Beach West Marine store and get a replacement.  That did not work out.  The wind and waves in the anchorage were too much for us, so we turned around and left.  A new battery was put off to Miami.

From Palm Beach south there were the drawbridges, lots of drawbridges, most with twice an hour opening schedules.  It was a frustrating game of rushing south, waiting for an opening, and rushing on again.  We were surrounded not by the quiet marsh land and wildlife of the waterway to the north, but by zillion dollar houses and concrete and steel sea walls that reflected then re-reflected the wakes of the large boats zooming by.  Yuck.  But, it was only three days and none were long.  We got to Miami Beach yesterday and anchored with another anchored sailboat and a large yacht among some nice houses, palm trees, a park, and highway.

It’s time to have some fun and get ready to go to the Bahamas.

While we were anchored in the Royal Island Harbour, Bill went for a long walk ashore.  It was spring, and it had been raining, so there were flowers everywhere.  I could not find this one in my books.  Do you have any idea what it is?

This is a second picture from Royal Island.  The two top snails which are almost the size of your closed fist had each found the perfect size hole to hole-up in while the tide was out.  They are eatable, so we don’t see a lot of them this large.

When we got to the Abacos, we anchored beside this large sailboat.  She is flying the White Ensign of the Royal Navy instead of the Red Ensign of the merchant navy that most British yachts fly.  At the top of her mast is the pennant of the Royal Yacht Squadron of Cowes.  Therein lies the explanation.

We stopped for a beer at Miss Emily’s Blue Bee Bar on Green Turtle Cay.  When we first came here in the 1980’s, Miss Emily presided behind the bar, and the tip jar went to the local Anglican Church.  Sadly, no more.  But, they still make her signature Goombay Smash.  See the sign.

Back in the United States, we stopped for a couple of days at the Cumberland Island National Seashore.  They have “wild” horses, perhaps too many, and there are moves a’hoof to reduce their number.

The River Trail provided a pleasant walk from the Sea Camp Dock where we were anchored to the Dungeness Ruins and the smaller buildings that surrounded the ruins.  The trail had just the right mix of sun and shade with fewer bugs than the trail we came back on.

The old Captain’s House was converted to a ranger station.  Captain Bill rocked on the porch while I wandered around in the yard.

We saw two sunsets while we were anchored at Cumberland Island before we resumed out trip north to New Bern.

After being back home for only 8 days, we went up to Watauga Lake and spent three days and nights on our smaller sailboat, Canary.  With rain clouds hanging low on the mountains, it does not look a thing like the Bahamas.

Hello from our home in Tennessee.  We returned here on June 14, but I’m getting ahead of myself, so I’ll restart where I left off last time.

When I last wrote, we had sailed from Hatchett Bay, Eleuthera to Royal Island, Eleuthera.  As soon as we arrived, the weather turned cloudy, rainy, and windy.  It did not change for ten days.  Some days we had more wind than rain, other days we had more rain than wind, but we never had the weather we wanted for the 50-mile trip over to the Abacos.

While we were anchored at Royal Island, other boats came and went.  Despite the weather, a few went to the Abacos, and a few came from the Abacos.  We were a retired couple with plenty of time and were not in a rush.  We avoided the bad weather in the ocean by waiting in the harbor for better weather.  We took a vacation from being on vacation.  We piddled about on the boat reading, knitting, and listening to the radio.  Bill took a hike on the island, and the two of us took a tour around the harbor in the dinghy.  I found several sea biscuits on the two nearby small beaches, but I left them behind.  I had plenty at home already.  We were a bit bored, but not totally so.

Finally, on Wednesday, May 23, the weather forecast was for southeast winds of 12 to 13 knots with 3- foot seas; it was time to head north.  We were not the only boat in the harbor with that idea.  Our anchor was up, and we were gone by 7:30am.  I believe the harbor was empty by 8:30am.  The wind started out a bit stronger than was forecasted, and the waves were a bit bigger, but the crossing to the Abacos was both fast and uneventful.  With all three of our sails up, we sailed past two of the boats that had been anchored with us at Royal Island.  [It is always a rare thing for us to overtake another boat.  We are a small boat and therefore a slow boat, but we sail our best on a broad reach, and we were sailing on a reach.]  We entered the cut at Little Harbour at 3pm, turned north, and anchored in the calm water behind Lynyard Cay.

The weather forecast gave us two dry days before the rain returned, and we spent them anchored at Lynyard Cay before we sailed on to Marsh Harbor.  Marsh Harbour is the “big city” of the Abacos.  There are lots of stores and most importantly a super market.  We visited the super market, refueled the boat, shopped for some gifts in the gift shops, and had a great meal in one of our favorite restaurants, Colours by the Sea.  Everything was accomplished between the rain showers.  During the showers we topped off our water tanks and filled our cockpit with full 5-gallon jugs of water.  On our entire trip this year, we bought just 42 gallons of water at Palm Cay Marina, and we got a few free jugs of water from a tap in Black Point.  The rest of our water came from rain.  And, we had plenty on this trip.

After four nights in the “big city”, we were ready to move to a more tranquil spot.  We motored out of the harbor and sailed the few miles to uninhabited Water Cay.  Although another boat anchored near us during the day while they snorkeled on a nearby wreck, and second boat came and spent the night, it was a far calmer and quieter place than Marsh Harbour.  We enjoyed the peacefulness, swimming around the boat and taking a nice walk through Water Cay’s foot-deep sand flats and along its white sand beaches.  After our one night at Water Cay, the wind and waves were right to go around Whale Cay.  Because the water behind Whale Cay is shallow, deeper draft boats like ours must go around the Atlantic Ocean side of the cay; first out of the sound into the ocean, then up the ocean side of the cay, and finally back into the sound.  The charter boat companies in the Abacos call it the “Whale Cay Passage”, and fearfully describe its horrors to their charterers.   But really, it is like Longfellow’s little girl who had a little curl…  when it’s good, it’s very good indeed, but when it’s bad, it’s horrid.  With our good weather, our trip was very good indeed.

We anchored off New Plymouth Settlement on Green Turtle Cay and went to the famous Miss Emily’s Blue Bee Bar for a cold beer.  Then we walked around the town for a bit.  It was hot ashore, so we went back on the cooler water and took a dinghy tour of Black Sound and the boats that were moored there.  Our departure from the Bahamas was drawing closer.  But, we needed one final cheeseburger in paradise and decided to visit Sundowners Bar and Grill.  While we were having our rum punches and waiting on our cheeseburgers, we had a delightful conversation with a recently retired Coast Guardsman and his wife.  The conversation, rum punches, and cheeseburgers were all good.

On May 31 Bill changed the engine oil and did a few maintenance chores.  We checked the weather forecast and decided it was time to leave for the states.  The wind would be from behind us, and the rain and storms would probably hold off for a few days.  We brought the dinghy onboard, deflated it, packed it away, and made sure all was ready for a long passage.  We left in midafternoon.  There would be stormy weather off the Carolinas in a couple of days, so we headed to St. Augustine, Florida.  From there we planned to sail up the coast; out in the ocean on good weather days and inside in the ICW on bad weather days.

The wind played games with us.  Instead of staying in the southwest, it changed directions and blew from the northwest, nearly the direction we needed to travel.  Bummer.  We adjusted the sails and continued.  During the evening of Saturday, June 2, a little more than 48 hours out of Green Turtle Cay, we had a NOAA weather radio alert for a strong thunderstorm with 50 knot winds and hail.  Next came a Coast Guard broadcast describing the coming storm and telling vessels to seek safe harbor immediately.  We were approximately 40 miles off shore.  There would be no safe harbor for us.  We took all the sails down, closed all the hatches, and donned our foul weather gear.  In the middle of all this activity, we had a pod of dolphins join us.  They really put on a show doing back flips 3 feet in the air.  Although I watched, I did not have time to make a video.

The storm came.  With the sails down, we motored slowly into the wind.  When the wind reached 40 knots, Bill could not hold the bow into the wind, so he turned downwind, the opposite of the direction we wanted to go.  The wind peaked at 54.7 knots, the rain pelted down, a little hail fell, and the lightning was spectacular.  Thankfully, the bad part of the storm only lasted about half an hour.  When the wind dropped to 25 knots it seemed very calm.  I have now survived a 50-knot storm, but I do not need to do that again.

During the storm, we not only made no forward progress, we also backed us up 3.8 miles.  If we continued to St. Augustine, we would arrive in the dark.  Not good, we do not pass through inlets or cuts in the dark.  It is too dangerous.  We changed course and headed for the St. Mary’s River entrance at Fernandina Beach, Florida.  The rest of the night was calm. The thunderstorms moved off to the Gulf Stream and filled the eastern sky with an all-night light show with flash after flash of lightning.

After sixty odd hours at sea, we glided through the St Mary’s entrance and anchored on the Florida side of the Cumberland Sound.  We raised our yellow quarantine flag and called Customs and Border Protection for clearance into the United States.  Despite both the boat and the two of us being registered with the Small Vessel Reporting System, and despite our having properly submitted an internet Float Plan for our return to the United States, Customs and Border Protection asked us to check in with their experimental CBP Roam cell phone app which is being trial tested in Florida.  So… we went to the Google Store, download the app, entered all the data about the boat, the trip, and ourselves, then photographed ourselves and our passports.  While it was all easy enough, and we were cleared to enter the US almost immediately, it was frustrating for two old and tired people with a brand-new cell phone in one hand and a celebratory arrival beer in the other.  Naptime followed.

The next morning, we moved Irish Eyes to Cumberland Island.  We spent two days anchored off the Sea Camp Dock.  The island was lovely, but it was hot.  I think Cumberland Island is the bug capital of the world.  As we walked the trails, I could hear the mosquitoes all around me.  I just kept moving.  Bill was behind me, and he told me I had a large swarm of the nasty beasts flying behind me.  Of course, they did not bother him, just me.

By June 6 the weather off the Georgia and Carolina coasts had improved, and we headed north up the coast.   We had our sails up, but because the wind was light we were also running the engine to keep our speed up.  The next day, worried that we would run out of fuel, we ducked into Charleston to buy another 20 gallons.  It took us three hours to go into Charleston Harbor, buy the fuel, then come back out into the Atlantic.  It was an annoying but necessary side trip.

After a second consecutive night underway at sea, we entered the Cape Fear River, motored up the ICW to Wrightsville Beach, and spent a few hours anchored there resting and having supper.  Just before sunset, we headed back out into the Atlantic on the last of our overnight sails.  Early in the morning, we had a bit of rain but nothing like the big storm we had off Florida.  We came into the Beaufort Inlet early in the morning, motored north in the ICW, and anchored in Cedar Creek just after lunch.  We could have continued for another three hours to our slip in Northwest Creek Marina, but both of us were too tired to even consider that.  We spent a very calm evening anchored in Cedar Creek and continued to Northwest Creek Sunday morning.

Our first chore was to get the air conditioner out of the car, install it on the boat, and plug it in.  It took hours for the air conditioner to suck all the humidity out of our damp boat.  While the boat was cooling down we moved some of our things from the car to the boat and from the boat to the car.  Then, we each took long, long, long showers with unlimited hot water.  Lounging in a cool, dry, air-conditioned, stationary boat after a long hot shower was just pure bliss.

It rained the next several days, and Bill could not do the outdoor projects he wanted to do.  We decided to pack up and head for our home in the mountains.  This year’s trip was fun highlighted by the kids coming to Black Point and marred only by the rainy weather and our fuel tank repair trip to Nassau.  We will probably go again.

Enjoy your summer.