The Party is over

The party is over.  You know the old saying, well this party is over.  Some may already be aware that Kevin and I are back stateside.  Let me back up a bit.  This trip was meant to be a shakedown cruise to test all our systems and see how well we did provisioning for long term.    During our trip Kevin has been babysitting (as he calls it), the water maker.  There have been multiple leaks under the floorboards just above the water and diesel tanks.  None of the water is able to go in the bilge, so we manually moop it out with a sponge and bucket.  About two weeks ago the watermaker had a bolt shear off, which then caused the piston shaft to wobble and  blow out the seals.  Just prior to this happening the leak had got to the point of spilling a gallon of seawater under the floorboards, for every gallon it was making.  He had replace all the seals twice, prior to this. 
So with all that said we needed to head home.  We heard horror stories from other cruisers about having parts shipped over and being held up in US customs for weeks.  It would have been a little on the expensive side for buying 400 gallons of water (time to go home).   We planned on anchoring out in melbourne, while waiting for parts to be delivered.  Well that's not happening with all the crab pods littering all the anchorage spots.  Our new home for the month is back at Waterline marina, just a different slip. 
It will be off to St. Augustin until July after we get our parts and fix the water maker.  Until then, fair winds my friends and happy sailing.

The Vacation is almost over

The Vacation is almost over.  The past two weeks we have sailed to Tilloo Cay, (just south of Hope Town), Guana Cay and now we are anchored in Manjack.   Time to go to work.
    Tilloo Cay and Hope Town where very nice.  We had to anchor down at Tillo, due to our draft and would take a 4.5 nautical mile dinghy ride into Hope Town.  Tillo was a nice protected cove for a North, south or east wind.  Bad for a West wind.  So we stayed there for about five days before the winds started to shift more out of the NW.  Our travel to Hope Town was nice, it is like a little quaint village.  All the houses in town are cottage size, with lovely landscaped yards and white picket fences.  The people seem to work together nicely and are very polite.  I found a art gallery named “The Jib”, it is owned by a German couple.  He is the painter and she is the quilter.  She makes these neat necklaces out of beads and fabric, also purses (which I got one of each for my birthday).
    Our next sailing trip took us to Guana Cay.  In all our years of sailing to the Bahamas, I have always wanted to go to Nippers on the beach.  Well I finally made it.  We had a delicious blackened grouper fish sandwich and then spent the next couple hours celebrating a birthday with complete strangers (a group of about 10 women).  They were so much fun.  That evening we had three other couples from neighboring boat over for drinks, it was very nice.  We only spent two days at Guana, with the weather changing.
    There is a passage you have to go through to get north of Guana to the rest of the Abacos “Whale Cay Passage”  if the winds are out of the NE or East it can be a very rough turbulent ride.  So we left first thing in the morning before the winds picked up, since they were out of the NE.  It took about 2.5 hours to get to ManJack Cay, which is one island north of Green Turtle.  Our plan is to stay in this general area, switching between here and Green Turtle or Crab Cay (depending on wind direction and weather) for the next 6 weeks.  This is a nice area to be and we are now starting to do some work on the boat.  Why not do it here in paradise.  It may be several weeks before I post again, until then. Fair winds and Happy Sailing my friends.

Our Adventure continues

Well!,  where do I begin?   We have been having a great time in Spanish Wells.  Some of you have seen a few of the photo’s I posted on facebook.  I think the captains favorite spot is Buddha’s.  The prices are very reasonable and the atmosphere is great.  The other day I did not make a wise shoe choice before heading out and it did a number on my knee.  So we ended up and Buddha’s and after a batch of conch fritters, a drink and a few bottles of rum purchased in his liquor store, I asked Buddha for a ride back to the dinghy.  He was pleased to accommodate my request.  I think he just likes to show off his souped up golf cart that will do over 50mph. 
Yesterday we rented a golf cart and toured both Spanish Wells and Russell Island, with a few stops along the way.  At the north west tip of Russell Island is Sandbar grill.  The food and scenery was wonderful, but a little pricey.  We then ventured to the northwest end of Spanish Wells and found a lovely sandy beach, which we will try out on Wednesday.  We finally ended up at Kathy’s Bakery, the Main grocery store (where Kevin was able to buy a case of coke for $20).  Our last stop for the day was the local realty office to check out the prices for homes on the island.  The prices and taxes where not as bad as we thought.  That is for our next dream.

We left spanish wells on Thursday and headed back to Royal Island cove to wait out another high south wind coming through on Friday.  Saturday morning we sailed to Little Harbor in the Southern end of Abacos.  The sail up was great, but the approach into little harbor cut was not so fun with 5 foot following seas.  We are now Anchored just north of Little Harbor and will be making our way north to Hope Town in the next few days.  Till then my, fair winds and happy sailing my friends.