|
Anchor Day 8, Sunday July 11th
We
woke up to a gorgeous sunny and hot day anchored off of Powell
Cay in the Bahamas, but the best part was the generator and air
conditioners were still running! Everything is working perfectly
and I probably shouldn’t even say that out loud – does it count
that I’m writing it? Barry put the dingy together and we went
off to the little island so Salty could do his thing and we
could scope it out for more treasures. It’s so idyllic! Walking
on the white powdery sand and in the crystal clear water is just
wonderful. Salty loves the beach and seeing as how there is
nothing on this island except trees, birds and sand we don’t
have to worry about anyone hassling us about having our dog off
leash and running in and around the island. We went by Bill’s
boat to see what he was doing in the dingy with a grappling
hook, just in time to see him pull a big fish out of the water
that had somehow gotten stuck around his prop – it had obviously
gotten away from some fisherman as it was the fishing line in
his mouth that caught him this second time. Barry washed off the
stern with soap and water as it was terribly dirty from diesel
fumes and saltwater. What he didn’t know was that the
“saltwater” hose was actually hooked up to our fresh water
supply, meaning that now we are down to about a quarter tank of
water. Oh well, we’ll be going to another anchorage tomorrow and
we’ll just have to stop off at a marina to fill up the water
tank again. I think a water maker will be in our not too distant
future. He was on the satellite phone again with Dave Swanson,
another Agent in our office who will meet with our client to
present the offer that was made on his house, and of course to
the client to explain that Dave would take good care of him
while he was away. The guys took a couple of the dingys and
buzzed off with their snorkel and fishing gear to a reef about 5
miles out, the other girls sewed and had a nap, I finished
another book and got ready to make a big dinner for the sailors.
The guys had a great time snorkeling but didn’t manage to catch
anything – a shark (almost) but what would they do with it once
they caught it? They were in dingys for cryin’ out loud. They
did say that the coral formations were incredible along with the
colorful tropical fish. Barry took Salty into shore for his
evening “swim” and it looked like Salty just couldn’t wait till
they were all the way in – he jumped out when he thought it was
shallow enough. Well, being the crystal clear water it is, what
he thought was shallow water wasn’t and he went right to the
bottom and came up sputtering and choking. So, he had an extra
long swim into shore and I bet he never does that again. We all
gathered in “the big boat” for dinner – we didn’t manage to get
to the Champagne but I did serve caviar (Patty style), camembert
and pate, Jackie’s fabulous panache and then on to the main
course of roast pork, rice and veggies. Donna brought over some
delicious brownies with peanut butter topping – awesome and
definitely not on the Atkins diet!
Anchor/Cruise Day 9, Monday July 12th
We’ll be heading off to another anchorage today, as well as,
finding a marina where we can fill up with water and if there is
a restaurant, we’ll indulge ourselves and have lunch/dinner
there. We went into the island for Salty to run around and we
ended up walking round the whole island which took us about an
hour and a half. Guess we thought we needed to walk off all
those nasty carbs from last night. Salty had a ball chasing the
Sandpipers, charging up the beach and walking in the water and
occasionally stopping to lie down in the surf. There were lots
of conch shells, crabs and very strange long jelly-fish type
things along the shoreline. The other day we found two perfect
sand dollars and today we found a beautiful shell like the one
Bill and Jackie brought over on our first night, however, by the
time we got back to the boat, we had broken all three – good
thing I got a picture! We also came across some strange things
like a television – so, one would ask, where was the rest of the
boat? Another strange sight was a dead tree with several items
such as conch shells, plastic containers, small buoys, lines,
etc. all hanging from this tree like some sort of crazy
sculpture – very weird. Then around the same area were
make-shift tables, it looked like, in the trees as if someone
had camped out there for a while. The sailors took off to the
new anchorage around 11:30 am which will take them about two
hours to get to, while we putted around on the boat and Barry
got on the sat phone again to check in with the office and the
deals going on there. Then I noticed that about 5 or 6 small
boats with “locals” from Cooperstown went over to our great
little island to that exact place where the tables and
“sculpture” were located. About 20-30 people were gathered
there, children and all and it looked (through my binoculars)
like they were having a party – I’ve been reading so many
strange books lately, that I thought “oh my, they must be having
some sort of Bahamian Voodoo ritual or something”. I found out
later that July 10th is the Bahamian Independence Day and so
this being Monday, it was a holiday and all they were doing, I
guess, was having a get-together on the beach in celebration. We
got a call from Jackie on the portable VHF (great investment)
saying they were just approaching Manjack Cay and would be
anchoring very soon which gives us the go ahead to pull anchor
and head off to meet them. We arrived at Manjack about 1:30 pm
and it only took us a half an hour to get there whereas it took
the others two hours (the joys of power boating, right?) but it
was probably the most breezy day yet – a 2-3’ chop. We anchored
briefly enough to allow our buddies to get it together and come
over in our dingy (they towed it behind them when they left) to
our boat so we could all head over to Green Turtle Cay to get
some water and lunch. Then Bill had to drive our dingy back by
himself and leave it at his boat which meant we had to pick him
up as he jumped for the dingy – worked perfectly. The guys are
punching in Way points and the girls are just sitting back and
chatting about what seems “anything other than boating”. We
arrived at Green Turtle Cay Marina and they weren’t too
impressed that we were only there for water – remember we had
just put in $960+ of gas at Spanish Cay the other day. So, Barry
said “ok, I could use some diesel but it won’t be much”
….whatever. So, $158.60 later for diesel and $27.00 for
water…but the deal was that if we bought the gas and water there
we would be able to leave the boat at the gas dock and go to the
pool bar for something to eat. I know the others wanted
someplace with “air conditioning” but it had been so long since
they’d been in the Bahamas, we had to remind them that a lot of
these little places didn’t have air conditioning anyway. We
opted for that plan and as it turned out, it was quite
unfortunate as the hamburgers were over cooked, the chicken
under cooked and everything was overpriced – good thing we
didn’t order any booze and did I mention the hoard of flies?
Last year when we were at Pineapples (just 5 minutes away) they
had bags of water hanging all around the bar and I told this
story to “the sailors” that the bags of water were supposed to
keep flies away. Obviously doesn’t work because we had flies
everywhere, not to mention the heat! Why didn’t we just take the
burgers back to the boat and eat in the air conditioning? Of
course, during all of this Barry was on the sat phone with
whomever taking care of business and really, not having any kind
of vacation at all…he did manage to have a Kalik beer and say
he’d have to call the satellite phone people and have another
500 minutes put into his account. We obviously didn’t hang
around there for too long after we scoffed our lunch/dinner down
(it was 4:45 pm after all) and we went off again to the
anchorage – without ice! What were we thinking? The other guys
don’t have a mechanism to carry or store ice so that didn’t
matter to them (sailors are used to not having ice, right?) but
we do keep a cooler up top on the bridge for the extra drinks –
oh well, guess we’ll just have to suffer through putting the ice
in the cooler that the ice maker spurts out at a rapid rate. We
got back to the anchorage and decided to anchor further into the
bay and away from the more open water; we still had lots of
depth at 9’ in there so that was fine. The water had calmed
right down and was wonderful when we all sat around and told
stories – these guys have a million stories. We all have dogs on
board – they have two dogs each and we all wanted to get to the
dogs and bring them into shore to stretch their legs, among
other things. We met up with Jackie and Bill (Buster and Biskey
too) in their dingy and they said that shelling at the beach
where they had been was awesome but the bugs were
horrible…..never mind, we won’t go there! We got off the dingy
at another little beach into sand….soft, powder white sand that
you “honest to God”, sank inches into – so many inches at times
it was up past my ankles – reminded me way to much of walking in
snow when I was a kid (but way better) and quick sand also came
to mind. Salty again, had a ball. He loves this beaching thing
and chased the birds, “tried” to run in the sand (thick, powdery
and like quick sand remember) and got absolutely destroyed with
the salt water, deep sand and BUGS – I forgot to mention the
bugs came out after we were there a half hour. As soon as you
get out of a “breeze”, the mosquitoes come and take you away and
quickly. We high-tailed it out of there, got back to the boat
saying all along that we really love this “anchoring off”
concept because you can do this kind of thing – walk along a
deserted beach, look for shells, enjoy the peaceful beauty of it
all and our Salty dog loving the freedom and fun! However, the
ugly reality is that we do have to go into a dock again to get
gas, water and some of the finer things in life like a
restaurant, so we will go to Treasure Cay I believe within the
next couple of days.
Anchor Day 10, Tuesday July 13th
I hand-washed some of Barry’s clothes and started to make the boat
outside look like our own Chinese laundry when Barry suggested I
try out the dryer (we have a combo washer/dryer on board). It
didn’t take long for that to throw the breaker so I went back to
the Chinese laundry idea and Barry just found a place to put his
new water maker when we get back home. We headed off to our
little island again on our usual morning routine only to find
that low tide in this bay is LOW tide. The water we went through
last night in the dingy is a fraction of what it was and we had
to row over to shore. Barry initially tried to walk it out of
the shallows but found out quickly he’d be walking for the next
half hour if he did that. When we did finally make it we walked
around the island as far as we could go and Salty found lots of
things to occupy him between the sandpipers, the waves slapping
up against the awesome lime rock formations and all the little
creatures that teased him from within those rocks. If I could
only get him to take as much enjoyment out of our walks at home!
We saw a big sand mound close to shore with a little hole in it
and I was sure a crab or something was living in there – Barry
says “stick your hand in the hole and see” – yeah right. In our
trip back to the boat through the shallows we could at least see
the sea creatures at the bottom – star fish, jelly fish, crabs
and various types of coral. When we got back to the boat we
noticed the tide has gone down about 4’ since we arrived
yesterday but we’ve been in more shallow water with this monster
boat (remember coming out of West End in 3’) but we’ll watched
the depth sounder anyway. We settled in and read a bit but then
Barry noticed the generator exhaust was smoking again – not a
good sign, in fact a really bad sign as that what it was doing
when it kept shutting down at Cabbage Key. He went down and
checked the temperature gauges, shut it down and cleaned out the
air conditioner and generator baskets. He left it off for about
an hour then started it up, watched the gauges for another half
hour and if they started to go up in temp again, we were in
trouble. No generator equals no air conditioner, no fridge, no
freezer, no stove, no dinner, no sleep, and no joy! All this of
course was happening just when our first real downpour began at
around 5:00 pm. However, the rain stopped and the generator
started (and kept running) yay!! We vowed that when we were on
hook from now on, we would turn off the generator and clean the
baskets every morning when the heat was manageable. We had a
nice dinner and watched a movie then off to bed so we can get up
early to head off to Treasure Cay – to dock – for a couple of
days.
|
.
