Two weeks here and Lovin it!

I thought I would put some more photos on of our first two weeks here.
 

Early morning on our crossing

Love all the birds

At the channel just chillin

Blue hunting for crab.

Our friends place, besides some down trees the place fared well. 

Jon followed this guy around for awhile

We have decided to stay here for most of the season then head down to the Berry's to visit some friends and Sara then maybe on our way back to the States this spring head to the Keys since a lot of our good friends are in Key West and Marathon for the season.

Sitting in ORYC all alone.

Super moon

We had a weather window come up so we decided to take it and head to ORYC. It looked like a motoring window but that's fine with me just to get across the gulf stream. The forecast was for 3 to 5 ft waves and Southeast winds becoming South in the afternoon only around 10 knots, it never seems to be the same as they predict!

We had a great crossing with west winds in the morning and south winds in the afternoon, waves under a foot and a swell which was very far apart. This was one of our best time crossing to date.

We stopped in at West End for customs, the place really got hit hard by the hurricane and they have no radio, no electric and no water but customs was there to take our three hundred dollar. They are not open yet so dockage was free and since we were only going to be there for about 8 hours so that was a good thing.

We brought some relief stuff over so after taking that off the boat Jon came back with all our paperwork, we got all the time we asked for.

Instruments at night

We woke up around 1:30 am and untied the lines at 2:00 heading around the island to make Silver Cove Inlet at high tide which was about 7:30 in the morning.We had the super moon to help us out the channel at West End since the storm took out the channel markers. It really was a night night to be out as we followed the coast on a close reach the wind came around too and we had wind the whole time.

As we made our way across Freeport entrance we had to go around the cargo ships that are there unloading oil which was no problem; then we came up to a large tug towing a barge on a long cable. We could see his red port light on the front, the 3 lights indicating a tow behind him and the red green on the barge, but could not see his green knowing that we had passed his bow. AIS was not picking him up and he did not answer our call. Jon felt very confident in his course and felt we were close enough to shore where the tug wouldn't go, but when they shined one big ass light on us I panicked, because the only other time I saw this was with a sailboat that was not giving way to a tug with tow. Everything was fine and passe the tug just like Jon thought. The reason we couldn't make his green light was because he didn't have one!  "Welcome to the Bahamas mon".

The Breach

We made the channel at 7am and called Rick and Liz on the Radio, Rick and Liz have a home inside the channel and had brought their 52 foot sailboat in the week before, he offered to come out and guide us in.

Very Narrow channel

The channel had changed so much and part of the channel rocks jetty had been breached near the tree line which changed the whole flow of the water. Sand and rocks were in the channel with lots of debris on both sides. Because of the super moon we had no problem getting in and making our way to the dock.

Only a few boats are here and four Timeshare units are occupied. ORYC took a pretty good hit and lost some roofs, all their telephone poles, trees are gone, and Esters little bar at the pool has vanished. The fencing around the tennis court has been severely damaged too. There are many projects and lots of people working here, things get better every day.

Berny's place still up and running 

Tennis court damage

Giant Porgy

Breach at Running Mon channel

Boat damage at Knowles

We have been out on dinghy and by bike to see some of the damage the Hurricane did and all we can say is, WOW.!    

Channel rocks just inside Running Mon with-in the markers,...

      

Finally on the boat for another season.......

                       Just realized that we haven't updated the blog since we left New York.

Cave exploring

Cal loves his chicks

Amy with the kids

Our trip down the coast to Florida started with a stop in Pennsylvania to see Amy, Jeremy and of course the most important ones; Cal and Gwen. We stayed there a week and I really hated to leave them because I
know how quick they grow up.

We had a blast with them and even managed to play tennis and go explore a cave one day. We helped paint their dining room and put in a garbage disposal, which is not the first of installing one of these.

Cal loves his sister.

Next we traveled to Connecticut to spend some time with Jon's mother also visiting his sister and brother.


We had a blast playing "Cards Against Humanity" with his sister Kathy and husband Bob. Jon even had time to wire their new hot tub for them and take a soak one night.

Ari and Jill

Getting train to Boston

Then off to Boston to visit Jill and Ari for a week. We planned on helping install a new floor in the basement and some painting. I must say that it came out really great. We also took the subway into Boston with them and did some site seeing and had dinner "Thanks Jill and Ari". Ari put together a personal network for us so we can store all our stuff on our own cloud, accessible from our computers, which is working out great.
At this point we started back tracking, first back to Connecticut where we realized Hurricane Matthew was heading right for the Bahamas and then for Kasidah. So our over night stop at Amy and Jeremy's turned into almost a week's wait. Amy and family were at the outer banks vacationing and so we were there till we knew what this puppy was going to do.

We watched the weather and  saw our fears were coming true, it was not only heading for our to favorite island in the Bahamas, but also looked as it was going to be dead on to hit Kasidah on Friday, the same day we were scheduled to be moved to the work yard. We called the marina and found they were all getting ready for the worst. We would have to wait it out to see when to head down not even sure we would have anything to head down to.

By Thursday morning Mathew had shifted just a little which spared the Berry's from a direct hit but was looking more like Grand Bahamas would get hit bad. We've seen photos since then and this place really got hit hard.

When it hit Florida it stayed right on the coast which saved any real bad winds from hitting Kasidah but really made a mess up the entire coast into North Carolina.

Jon Garrett and James

As the storm got closer to Florida emergency evacuations went out Amy and Jeremy decided it was time to end their vacation and head home. So we stayed till Monday and got to spend a few more days with the grand kids.

Our trip down was a little off track, all the flooding and many hotels were booked, but it was not a bad trip at all.

Stocking Boat

Moose during a cookout.

Gaters.....

We arrived at the boat and as always we're nervous when boarding Kasidah the first time. We never know from one year to the next what we will fine.

To our surprise she looked fantastic; with only a little green on the decks, no mold or mildew down below and besides a few tree frogs no bugs. We had a great visit from Jon's nephew, who is a chief on a 170 ft private yacht. He came up to stay a night with a co-worker from Scotland.

 We've done all our cleaning, most repairs needed, and are just waiting to be splashed.
We are still not sure of our plans, we will finish shopping and head to Stuart and try to decide there.