That Was Close

A near disaster was averted by some quick reactions. Arline and I had Mark and Lynda in our dingy as we headed to town and a store. It’s quicker to dingy across the little bay and tie up at an old fishing station and then walk the rest of the way. With a full moon the tide was quite low. We were having an extreme jump onto the place we normally tie up so we decided to off load at a different spot will a little smaller jump up to land. We pulled up next to the spot, the ladies were seated, Mark and I were hanging onto the wall and Mark started to climb over the wall by grabbing onto the top of it. Well the cap of the concrete wall gave away and moved, a 200 or 300 lb piece of concrete was ready to fall 4 ft onto him, into the dingy, or who the hell knows what it would have done. In a split second I screamed PUSH! He pushed on the moving concrete and I pushed on the fixed wall. We were able to push the dingy away from the wall and at the same time he was able to hold and push the monster piece of concrete away from us and it landed in the water missing the dingy and us by inches but soaking everyone when it hit the water. But no one was hurt! From start to finish it was 2 seconds of pure fright, Mark and I thought and reacted as one. He got the brunt of the water, and all of our thanks. That really could have been ugly if it landed on him or bounced into the dingy. Mark is a retired firefighter and quite the fit guy. I can’t imagine if he wasn’t there, sharp and fit as he is. We could have all been hurt.

Happy Birthday to our oldest Daughter Amy .

Sara love's the Beach

We are really relaxing and having a great time in Paradise. We have been hanging out with many different cruisers this week, Bud and Jill left two days ago to pick up some friends that were flying into Nassau. We said our good-byes and hope we may see them again out here in the future.

A Sponge in two feet of water

We have been exploring and hunting in the water for things to eat which has been really fun with Mark and Linda, they are sitting here for a few days before heading to the Abacos.  Mark is a great spear-fisherman so we were getting some pointers from him. We have had lobster and conch the last few nights and the Lobster caught have just got bigger and bigger.

At our Beach cleaning conch

Jeff one of our friends on the island found a ride back to the states for our malfunctioning AIS, When you try to send something from here to the states it needs an agent to bring it through customs it has to do with Homeland security so this will make things much easier to have fixed and then there is no problem with shipping it back.

Now these are Lobster's  "Marks the man to hunt with"

This will make me feel much better when we cross back over because we always cross at night, when you only go 5 to 6 knots you end up out there at night. We really don't mind night sailing but it makes us fell more comfortable when we can see the big guy's way before there's a problem.

Fun in the Sun

Happy hour, Jon made conch fritters for all to try

Bush Tea

 We are having a great time here and as the locals say "life is very short mon so have fun while you are still movin". Yesterday we took a group of ten altogether and did some touring on foot this was fun and some of these cruiser have never been here so it was fun showing them around the old golf course and grounds, we even got to see some wild life......a gray snake and a beautiful humming bird. The day was filled with winds blowing 35 to 40 and cold so it was a good day for a walk. Later we went back to the marina and another boat asked us to join them at a fire they started. We went right over and noticed a huge cast iron pot on, which they explained it was aphrodisiac Bush Tea called 21 Gun Salute. ...  say no more. Well one thing I have learned is that when we travel we are here to explore and try new things sooooooo Jon and I had a few sips. The only thing we got from it was a visit to the bathrooms at about midnight but that's ok at least we can say we have tried it.

The caves

Overlook at the caves

Today I arranged two vans to come in and take us for a tour of the island and I made a deal with the guy that it would be five dollars a piece and that twelve of us would be going. This trip was great we were introduced to new places that we had not visited before and a little more history about the island.   

First full day in Paridise

I talked to Jill last night on Skype and she had been watching us on both AIS and Spot and the first thing she asked was how close the fast powered ferry boat had come to us about 8:00PM, well that was really funny because that was right after we lost communication with AIS. Jon had just laid down to take a nap and had pointed out all the ships around us and confirmed with me that they were all heading in a different direction, a few minutes later as I was looking over to port I noticed something that looked as if it was a plane or just a flash of light. At that point I tried to focus on it and then looked at radar which did not pick it up, I then realized it was a boat and could make out his red light, by that time he was behind me and by the time Jon got up to look it was well behind us as though it was just a dream.

crystal clear

catch of the day

Our first day has been fantastic so far. We walked the dogs through the golf course early this morning, then headed out to harvest some conch and even managed to stop by my favorite beach before heading back to clean the conch.

My perfect beach

We will be making some fitters for the other cruisers here tonight. There are a few boats in here waiting for this front to come by which should have winds 30 to 35 knots. Tonight should be very interesting.

Great harbour Cay, Berry Islands

Finally we made it to our first and maybe only stop in the Bahamas this year. We love it here in Great Harbour Cay and feel it's like our home out of the country. We may stay around the Berry's and do some exploring which most people miss because they are so into getting farther south.
Amy and Jeremy will be flying in on the 31st of this month, so we will be here for that and  hope for some really nice weather while their here.

Looking for leak (Note the bloody right arm and can you feel the heat)

The crossing took place on the 31 instead of the 30th because once we got out the inlet at Lake Worth, Jon realized we had antifreeze leaking from somewhere, so we shut down the engine and drifted backwards even though we had our sails up for about an hour to try to find the problem with no luck.
At that point we made the decision to head back to Lake Worth and anchor the night while trying to find the problem. If he couldn't find it we would head back to Stuart and make a plan from there. Jon pulled all sorts of things apart and at about 7pm he realized that two bolts on the thermostat housing were loose. A much simpler problem than thought.

eating MRE's just before dark (Thanks Amy) YUK

We gathered our thoughts at that point, and then called our Friends Bud and Jill whom were in Lake Worth to see what way they were heading in the morning. They were heading to West End, so we would just meet them in GHC.
We ended up getting up before dawn to dingy ashore and let the dogs go pee and off once again out the channel. This time all the way over to GHC a total of 27 hours.

All tethered in and taking a nap
 Note the 1st sun rise of 2012 in front of us

We did have one causality which was just before dark of course, the AIS stopped working or rather it had a malfunction and could only let us know when ships were within a few miles of us and this doesn't help me much because I try to keep ships away by more miles than that, so when one shows up its too late. I find its always something that's broke when owning a boat............BOAT; you know the acronym!





Jon's morning catch but someone caught him too and tried to bite his tail off



Marina manatee coming to say hi

Bud and Jill arriving to sit with us before their crew show up in Nassau

Anyhow now we are in GHC and our friends are right next to us in Paradise.