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Day 16-18, July 30th to August 1st
Monday, July 30, 2007
Well, we’re finally here and now it feels like we’re in the “Bahamas”. Gorgeous water and beach all around us! We had a pretty easy morning after taking Salty into the beach for about 15 minutes and when Barry and Salty got back – I buzz-cut the Bear! Yes I did, I got out the clippers and went at it – now he’s got hardly any hair ….kinda like that Bruce Willis look. It’s a bit patchy but in a week, it’ll grow back to the point where I can tune it up and he’ll be rockin’ in his new do! Then we packed up around 12:00 noon to go off on a Dingy Adventure and had the BEST time – perfect weather, perfect water and perfect place. We went into “our” beach so Salty could do his thing before heading off and he was in quite a mood – just wanted to run on the beach and lay in the water. I was amazed when he settled into a small “creek” made from the tide going out and there was a baby Stingray in there just slowly gliding along very close to Salty. I got the camera a little too slowly as the picture of Salty laying down beside the baby Stingray would have been a good one but as luck would have it, the Stingray moved, Salty saw it and all hell broke loose. He bounced at it and when it came toward him, he jumped up about two feet – all fours – in the air! Then he started to chase it, with me yelling “NO, Salty no, Salty come, Salty NO” …. seems I’ve done that before in this story. Salty is pretty well behaved most of the time but when it comes to the boat, dingy and beach he is very much a “Terrier”. I’ve never seen such stubbornness and outright disregard for, as when we are on one of our boating adventures. Even when Barry YELLED at him to come, he completely ignored him and continued to do exactly what he wanted to do and that was get that danged thing that was swimming under the water, just within paw’s reach! Sounds like the “bad child” syndrome, I’d say. Anyway, I had to drag him away from the poor little baby Stingray with his tail between his legs (well, ok his tail’s not long enough but you know what I mean), ears down and that look of “I’m so sorry Mom, I don’t know what came over me” look. Off we go on the dingy and we went for about 45 minutes out in the ATLANTIC – the water was so calm it was eerie, passing by large rock formation and very, very small islands, which would be “Cays”, I suppose. We stopped off at a “private” Cay that was called Cistern Cay and for all we could see, it had one house overlooking the water and another “compound” at the other end of the island. Perhaps that is the island where the research center is located – that would explain its unattractiveness. Then we went off to Hawksbill Cay. On our way, I looked over at the MANY huge rocks in the water and I thought “what is that – it looked like a ship on top of a rock”. We went closer and lo and behold it was a Ship on a Rock! Obviously, this guy got way off course, was drunk, in a storm or some other catastrophy! I’m not kidding, this beach gives new meaning to “pristine”. Not a soul in site, we brought the dingy into the shore in 6 feet of water – almost to the beach and then 3-4 feet and to the shore just a few feet away... beautiful, clean and clear water – it looked like a huge pool – no weeds, no rocks, no black areas of unknown origin – just miles of untouched blissful beach. Salty and I went for a long walk down the beach of soft, white powder sand then returned to the Captain who was floating “full out” in the water, meaning it was very, very salty and “buoyant”! Barry and I were in the water, just floating and talking and we looked over to see Salty “ready” to go – typically, he would never be anywhere but where we are, but there he was sitting in the dingy, staring at us with at “are you two finished yet, I want to go look”. Anyway, we let him stare us down like a little vulture We stayed there a while and then headed back to the boat – left the beach at 3:00 pm and were back at the boat at 3:45, so all in all, we were gone a nice long time, had our fair share of sun and water and we were all ready to get back to a nice shower and air conditioning! We saw a new Yacht anchored at the outside of the Park, that was too big to get into where we were – the “Aspen Alternative” – gorgeous boat with all the toys. We got back “home” and as we showered, Salty still wanted to be out on the swim platform watching his fish, waves and any boats going by. It’s amazing how wonderful a simple thing like a shower can be when you are anchored off and trying to conserve water. I cooked up a hamburger feast with (again) Caesar salad because the Romaine is clearly not going to last another day. What boaters we are – all three of us were out cold by 9:15 pm. This Adventure stuff is hard on old guys like us.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
We awoke to a huge rain storm, so maybe that was why we were rocking, swinging and ultimately sleeping in. The sleeping in part would have nothing to do with the fact that we were exhausted after a 4 hour tour on the dingy and just generally feeling “old”. We did, however, anticipate a storm during the night or early morning (surprise) and had closed all of our plastic enclosure windows and doors up at the helm level and our aft deck. It was pouring! Of course, Salty still has to go into the beach to do his business so off Barry and Salty went in the dingy in the pouring rain. I could see Salty on the beach through the pouring rain – having a ball – running, leaping and loving being on the beach in the pouring rain. For a breed that isn’t supposed to like water that much, he has definitely proved that wrong – he loves the rain, the pool and the beach! I think he’s a Retriever at heart with their love of the water and birds (and fish?) but the only theory that’s wrong there is that he will NOT retrieve. I thought the rain would let up after an hour or so but it lasted most of the morning – and I guess that was a good thing because the generator started to over-heat slightly (of course) and we ended up turning it off so that Barry could do the very same flushing out procedure he did a couple of days earlier. We left it off for several hours to give it a rest and hopefully, that will be enough to get us through the night before we head off to Emerald Bay Marina just 12 miles from Georgetown in the Southern most part of Great Exumas. Salty and Barry headed off on the dingy for a ride while I did my “story” and updated pictures for our Adventure. I was down below in the salon, plugging away on the computer and through the windows, I saw an old crotchety man coming VERY close to the boat and I thought “what the hell is he doing” he was just going to bang into us. Then I saw him throw a line and I just knew that Barry and Salty had gotten into some kind of trouble (like running out of gas) and I ran up to the swim platform to help. Yup, they ran out of gas, even though Barry was sure they had lots of gas to take it for a spin and back. He thinks there will be enough gas for two small trips into shore – one later this evening and again tomorrow morning for Salty’s needs. We will be heading out tomorrow morning and because we didn’t have enough gas in the dingy to spare, the Park Ranger came to us to collect their money - $20 a night to anchor and $10 a day for internet….not so bad considering what we pay at Marinas. When the boys finally got back, I moved up to the aft deck to continue my work (I’d been inside for hours with no A/C – I know, what a sad story that is! It was wonderful up there with a great breeze coming through and I wished I’d thought of that earlier. After I had finished for the day (working on my story that is), we had a couple of cocktails on the aft deck while swaying back and forth watching the water, new boats and Park life in general. Occasionally you see a small boat come in from one of the other Cays with obvious “guests” who want to tour the Park, swim and the young ones can be towed along in their (I want to say rubber tubes) floatation devices. Then a boat came in to moor with a young woman on the bow who will have to do the same “hook and moor” and I wanted to watch how she did it, seeing as how everyone thinks that I’m so bad at it. WELL! She cheated – she was no better at hooking onto that damn mooring line than I was – trying ever so hard to hook it with the boat hook. She finally got a hold of it (much like I did when the boat hook got caught at mooring ball six) but then someone else came out and tried to bring up the line with her feet – that is definitely cheating! Then, the two of them hooked the actual mooring line right onto their boat instead of threading one of their own lines through it – that’s not the way it is done and so I felt somewhat vindicated that I wasn’t so totally mooring ball challenged as I thought. Then, we had a great BBQ of chicken Souvlaki, Greek potatoes and roasted veggies – everything is going just fine…. Then the generator started to overheat! We’ll see what the night brings
L
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
I know this is not going to come as a surprise to anyone that the generator overheated during the night and Barry was up around 12:00 midnight and every hour thereafter, jacking with it over and over again, flushing it out at 4:00 am and then finally turning the damn thing off and just opening up the windows. Funny, at about 6:00 am it was so quiet and calm that it felt like the old days when you woke up at the cottage and all you could hear was the faint slapping of waves, slightest little breeze blowing over you, dark wood on the walls, as you woke up to the total silence of cottage country. Never mind, when we really woke up, we quickly realized the freakin’ generator has crapped out once again and poor Barry had been up all night long fussing and worrying and fixing it! It’s obviously time to move to a Marina where we can be on shore power. The generator had been off for several hours now and when Barry went to turn it back on again, if of course, wouldn’t start – of course it wouldn’t, why would it cooperate now? Down in the engine room he goes again and luckily, the last time this happened, he had watched the mechanic fix the switch that causes the generator to shut down when it overheats. That worked – now onto taking Salty into shore for obvious reasons and hopefully, just hopefully, he will have enough gas to get over to shore and back. Off the boys go – and it’s only a couple of hundred feet where I watch Barry shut off the engine and walk the dingy in through the shallow water – the two of them get off the dingy and one would think Salty would run for the beach to do his business….but oh no, he was more interested in chasing the baby sting rays again! I wonder if baby sting rays can actually “sting”? As I watched, I couldn’t help but chuckle because I just knew what was going on – Salty was jumping in the shallow surf and then decided to swim back out AWAY from the shore with Barry yelling “Salty, Salty, Salty” – oh my, someone’s going to be in trouble. Then the little dink decided to not do his business but just lay on the beach – I’m sorry Salty, but that was a bad move, considering the kind of mood Barry is in…. generator crapping out, no gas in the dingy and trying to get packed up to leave….nope, Salty, this is definitely not the time to be funky. Anyway, they both made it back safely to the boat and we proceeded to pack everything up, secure and fasten and we were ready to go by 8:50 and out in the “Atlantic” by 9:00 am. Again, the seas cooperated with only a slight chop at first then kicking up a bit to about 2-3’ waves and by the time we reached Emerald Cove, it was back down to only 1-2’ waves even though the wind had started to blow a little more, which would be the norm because we now have to dock the boat. The tricky part is to find the entrance to the Marina. As per usual, the entries are never marked clearly and you have to practically guess where to go in. Once found, we saw this is a beautiful marina with gorgeous condos overlooking the Bay and the Atlantic. It’s actually associated with the Four Seasons Hotel that is also here with three restaurants, shopping and a casino there. The marina, though, has its own little Club with laundry facilities, free cable and the Wahoo Restaurant that we will definitely go to tonight. Back to docking. The wind kicked up and with that comes the current and both of those things combined is not conducive to an easy docking….luckily, we didn’t have to stern into a slip and just docked on one of the side docks which suits us just fine, but even that was tricky with the wind and current blowing us away from the dock. Here we are and you know it is very stylish when the dock hand lays our a special carpet at the end of the gangway – whoo hoo, very stylish indeed. Once we were all settled in we sat down in the air conditioning with a drink and a conversation about how we now have shore power and can run all four air conditioners and not worry about the damn generator and for that matter, we can just go to marinas on our way back and not anchor off at all. Then, silence. The shore power went off! Crap. Please Lord don’t tell me the shore power isn’t going to work now either. Within an hour the power went off three times and so Barry decided he wasn’t going to run the boat on just two air conditioners and tried switching to a different outlet on the power box and that worked – whew. Salty and I walked around a bit to scope the place out and then I came back and began to write – Barry went to the bar for a Kalik – the local Bahamian beer. So, all is good today – everything is working and everyone is happy – I think we’re going to like it here. The Wahoo restaurant was wonderful – great Grouper and for a “casual” restaurant, it was pretty stylish with white linens and great service. Yes, I think we’re going to like it here.
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