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Cruise/Marina Day 18, Wednesday, July 21st
Woke up to another overcast, threatening to rain,
kinda day and as I sat in the early morning hours watching the
Marina wake up, a double rainbow appeared in the sky to the West.
That surely had to be a good sign for the rest of the day, right?
It started to rain around 10:00 am and it looked like that was
going to be the way it would be for most of the day so the sailors
decided to be sailors and took off in the rain with the Sea of
Abaco looking a little too rough for me. I guess it wasn’t that
bad because we headed out about an hour later in the same water
but with less rain. Once we were out of the Marina the rain
subsided a bit and even though the waves looked more ominous than
they actually were (it was really only a 2-3’ chop) it didn’t
affect us at all. The run probably can’t even be considered a run
– the engines barely warmed up before we got to Marsh Harbour – so
within an hour we were from one dock to another and quite
safely and happily settled in again. Of course always remember,
when there is internet access, I am checking email for the
business and our vacation rental and Barry is in contact with our
assistant Jeanne on the State-side via satellite phone – always
working in and around the “researching” we are doing on the
Adventures of a Salty Old Dog. Marsh Harbour is a larger Cay
with actual “traffic” compared to the other places we have been
and as a result, not as happy for Salty or any other dog going for
a walk or run on the Island as there is little grass and no
beaches we can walk to. Once we leave the safety of the Marina,
you hit the road which is fine for humans but dogs definitely
don’t have the luxury of freedom to romp off-leash here. It was
pretty low key today and once we got settled we went for lunch
then walked around to get the lay of the land, you know, liquor
store, internet café, grocery store, that kind of thing. Barry
rented a scooter “the Harley” to scout out places beyond walking
distance as I’m sure there will be things he needs for the boat
before we leave.
Marina Day 19, Thursday July 22nd
We wouldn’t have time to head back by boat by Saturday at this point
so Barry went off to the Airport to look into a flight out of here on
Saturday morning for the three of us and hopefully he can either buy
or rent a crate for Salty. I’m stuck here doing laundry at $3.00 per
machine so for $24.00 we’ll have clean clothes and towels when we
return in a couple of weeks with Jami. As it turned out, in true
Bahamian style, he couldn’t find out anything from anyone at the
Airport except that Saturday was sold out and they didn’t know
anything about crates. In frustration, he came back to the boat and
tried to call them (satellite phone at $1.09 per minute) several times
and finally after probably $100 in phone charges from being put on
hold or being cut off, he was able to get tickets for us AND Salty for
Sunday morning and Salty gets to sit right beside me instead of being
put in a crate (it’s a dog’s life); guess I’ll have to give him a
bath before we leave! It’s just a small plane, seats 12 people (or
dog) and will take an hour to get from Marsh Harbour to Ft.
Lauderdale. The husband of the injured woman from Guana Cay is at
this dock as well and he came by with a bottle of wine to thank us
profusely for helping the other day and also told us that after
surgery and therapy for 4-6 weeks, his wife should regain all use of
her hand – thank God. It was another low key day and we did much the
same as yesterday but scoped out the hardware store for oil
(tomorrow’s project), went to the internet café to deal with email and
ordered pizza for dinner – definitely not Atkins friendly.
Marina Day 20,
Friday July 23rd
More of the same lazy hazy daze of a Bahamian summer today and
even at 8:00 am, it was steamy while trying to give Salty a little
bit of exercise. He doesn’t like walking to begin with so with
the sun beating down and heat rising off the narrow sidewalks,
this was definitely not on his list of things to do. This Marina
is home of the famous “Moorings Vacation Charter Boats” ranging
from 30’ – 46’ sail and power boats available for charter and it
was actually one of these boats that the woman who had the
accident was on. We also had a couple of troops of Boy Scouts
come in who were sailing off for a couple of days which will be
quite an experience for all of them. Barry and I hopped on the “Harley”
and went off to the grocery store to check it out for when we
return in a couple of weeks and then the internet café to conduct
a bit of business before heading back to the boat to do our
projects; Barry and Bill to change the oil (after having to go
off in search of a filter at the local marine store) and I to
input data into Quicken which took most of the afternoon for both
projects. Any boat owner will tell you the projects never end, as
at the end of the day Barry said to Bill “I have a bit of a
technical question to ask about the port holes” and that in itself
turned into yet another project that took a couple of hours.
While looking for the oil filter Barry thought he had on board, I
discovered a “wet closet” and of course anything wet on the inside
of your boat is not a good thing. That lead to discovering the
aft port holes leaked slightly and the rest is project history
when they took four of the port holes out of the boat entirely to
re-caulk and re-install. Of course Barry said that if those four
needed to be tuned up then the other three will need to be done
tomorrow. Salty got his bath today so he should be good to go on
the plane Sunday morning all fresh and smelling lovely if he
doesn’t manage to fall in the water between now and then. By the
time the projects were finished and we got cleaned up it was late
and the restaurants were at the end of their serving day but we
managed to find “something” to eat then we hooked up with the
sailors to party a bit in the local bars within walking distanced
of the dock.
Marina
Day 21, Saturday July 24th
This was clean up the boat and projects day in order to get ready to
leave tomorrow.
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