So in the last post we were in Key Marathon, we stayed there till the beginning of June.

“Mission Accomplished”, as George Bush would say, except we really did accomplish our mission, we swam, we relaxed and we took trips to Key West. It was definitely a relaxing month. There is a hotel, that was part of our marina, about 100 yards away with a nice pool. We spent quite a few days there, having a drink, swimming, having another drink…

We took a few trips to Key West. A lot of people don’t like Key West, and more do. I personally like Key West quite a bit. I have been there more times then I can remember.  Older people that have been to Key West, a ways back, before it became mainstream, complain about how it has become touristic, and I can definitely understand their point. There are Walgreens, Denny’s, Express and other chain restaurants and stores right on Duval Street. Cruise ships come in to port almost daily. It would be better if none of the chain stores were there, and it would better if it was not so crowded, but change is inevitable… In general though, I think Key West has retained it’s weirdness. And most of the residents have retained there attitude, of enjoy life first, and everything else comes second. Most people that go to Key West are usually infected by this attitude while they are there, and usually for a week or two after their first exposure. And then some lucky people get infected and have this disease for the rest of their life.

Nadia and I went down to Key West about 4 times over the month. We took the bus there and back, it was around an hour and 45 minute trip each way. It wasn’t bad though, the view is beautiful the whole way. The only bad part, was some of the people on the bus were a little crazy.

We went scuba diving once. We went to Sombrero Reef. The water there gets to only about 30 feet deep, but it was a nice dive. We were supposed to do two tanks, but towards the end of our first tank, I had an equipment failure, and air started pouring out of one of my connections. So we surfaced and swam back to the boat. The dive instructor did not try to fix it, which is probably just their policy. Once we got back to the shop, it turned out that it just needed tightening. The dive guy on the boat was a little upset with us, because we were suppose to be back within an hour, but we were around 13 minutes late. At 15 minutes late, he would have to contact the coast guard, oops…

We also went to a play in Marathon, at the Marathon Community Theatre. The play was interesting, and I would recommend seeing a show there, if you are going to be in the area for a little while. We went to the Marathon Dragon Boat Races one weekend, which was fun. They had all kinds of food vendors, music and the races.

The coolest thing that happened to us while in Marathon, was right before we left. I had to dive on the bottom of our boat and scrape all the barnacles and growth off before we left. We had it cleaned in St. Mary’s, GA before we left, but our bottom paint was around 2 years old, and was completely ineffective. So I rented a scuba tank, and bought a paint scraper, and dove in. The bottom was pretty covered, and the prop was in real bad shape. So I scraped and scraped, and came up and took a break, and scraped and scraped, and came up and took a break. This went on for about an hour and a half, and I was almost done. Then Nadia points behind me and says, “What is that big thing floating up behind you?” At first I thought she was joking, but her tone was serious. That is probably the last thing you want to hear while swimming in the water. The first thing that came to my head was Jaws, then huge alligator, bull shark… So I turn around and it looks like a huge log with algae growing all over it. Then it hits me, “Manatee”. So I dive under the water and sure enough it is around a 1000 lb manatee heading straight at me. And I know manatees are vegetarian mammals, and completely not dangerous, but when you are in the water and a 1000 lb animal is swimming at you, it is a little disconcerting. So I swam back away, and he swam towards me, so I swam back the other way, and he followed me. So I finally stopped and looked under the water, and he was right in front of me a few inches away, staring at me. It was unbelievable. So I put my head out of the water, and he stuck his nose out of the water and gave a good sniff. He had the personality of a dog. He came over and let me pet him, and would give a smell every now and then. He stayed and let me pet him for around 4 minutes. It was such a surreal experience. Nadia got the camera and took some pictures, and she leaned over and petted him. She mocked me later about how I was afraid of him, but she didn’t get in the water. Supposedly because she just got a shower.

Petting Manatee

Manatee

Manatee Smelling

Manatee

We left in the beginning of June. Nadia was going to fly out of Fort Lauderdale, and I was going to take the boat from Fort Lauderdale up to Jacksonville. I wanted to try handling the boat by myself. We had to be in Fort Lauderdale for a certain date, so we had no choice but to leave, and of course the weather was not good to go, but we went anyway.

This time we decided to go on the ICW side the whole way. So we actually had to go the opposite direction for about 6 miles, to go under a bridge. Those 6 miles were nice, because the wind was with us. Once we turned and started heading in the right direction though, the wind was right at us, and we had to motor into it. We broke the trip into 3 days. The first day we stopped at a mooring about 45 miles away. The Keys are nice, in that they have parks, where they have free moorings for visitors. This benefits the boaters and bottom, since people don’t have to anchor. The second day we went really far all the way to No Name Harbor, on the north side of Biscayne Bay. This is a little tiny harbor, where people wait to cross over to the Bahamas, and some just come over to have fun. There was a lot of boats and not too much room to anchor, but it was a very calm night. It was pretty rough going in Biscayne Bay. The next day we went all the way up to Fort Lauderdale, to the marina we stayed at before. We had 2 days before Nadia had to catch her flight, so we went out to eat and toured the area again.

After Nadia left, I stayed one extra day to get ready to go, and then left as early as I could the next day. The bridges on the New river don’t open till 9AM, so I had to leave later then I would like, but I had no choice. I decided to go on the outside because of all the bridges, and I wanted to go in the ocean for fun. So it took about an hour and half to get to the inlet, it was really busy, boats everywhere, a huge freighter was getting turned around, police boats… But I got out without any problem. Once I got out, I put the sails up and I was moving along very well. After a little while, I must have hit the gulf stream, because I saw over 7 knots. I thought it was going to take around 8-10 hours to get up to Palm Beach, but it ended up taking around 6 hours in the ocean. It was perfect. I pulled into the inlet and anchored right there, with the plan of going outside the next day and knocking off a lot of miles. The whole trip was around 450 miles from Lauderdale to where I was going near Jacksonville. I was feeling pretty good, everything worked out well, and I was past the busy part of the trip.

The next morning I got up early and pulled out of the inlet. I knew the weather wasn’t going to be too good. They were calling for light North East wind till the afternoon, and then it was suppose to pick up and turn East. When I first got out, it wasn’t too bad, and I was motoring into the wind. There wasn’t that much chop, but after about two hours, the wind started picking up, and so did the waves. The waves started getting more steep and bigger. Eventually they were really slowing me down. I started only going 3.5-4 knots and at points I would get knocked down to 2 knots. It was not comfortable. I tried heading out farther, changing my direction, but it was pretty uncomfortable. I had a long way to go still, and at the speed I was going, it looked like I would be getting in very late. The motion started to really fatigue me, so I looked on the chart, and there was the Jupitor Inlet. I had planned to go up to the Fort Pierce Inlet. The guide books said not to attempt to go in the Jupitor Inlet without local knowledge. So I called Boat US up and asked for local knowledge. He did not recommend that I go through the inlet. At this point I was still around 45 minutes from the inlet. So I figured I would just tough it out and go all the way to Fort Pierce. By the time I was close to the Jupitor Inlet, I figured it was worth the risk to go in. So I called up Boat US and got the directions to go in. I turned left and headed for the inlet. The waves were very confused at the inlet, but I didn’t really feel it was much worst then before. Right were you pass through the two break walls, two waves came over the transom. Not very much but enough for me to stand up and get out of the way. Once I was inside the break walls, the waves were gone, it was beautiful, sunny, and I felt good. But the directions the Boat US guy gave me were not very clear. All he had to say was follow the markers, but he gave all kinds of directions, so I did circles and called him. He was on his boat and saw me, so he told me where I had to go to get to the ICW. Basically it was to follow the markers.

So I got on the ICW, and went all the way to Cocoa Beach, and got a mooring. I was happy to be secured, and I stayed 2 nights to give myself a break. I went out to eat, and went and saw a movie.

I’m going to end now, and continue in part 2.

It took four days to get from Lauderdale to Marathon. The trip was easy and pleasant. The first day we went down the New River, and went around 25-30 miles to Miami. It took quite a while, because there were a few bridges, and they were timed a little to quick for us, so many times we would be going just 3 knots between bridges. We anchored off the ICW, and had a calm night. The next day we went around 40 miles to Pumpkin Key. We had both sails up, but were only making around 3.5 knots, so just left the engine running at a low rpm to get us at 5 knots. The anchorage is basically a circular island, and you just anchor so the island protects you from the wind. The next day we were officially in the keys. At least that is what our guide books said. “Once you go into Jewfish Creek you are really in the keys.” And once we went into Jewfish creek, it did feel like the keys.

The keys are a wonderful place to sail. There are basically two ways you can go, the Hawkes Channel or the ICW. The Hawkes Channel is basically the coast of the Keys on the Atlantic Side. There are Coral reefs about 5 miles off, so these buffer some of the wave motion, but you are pretty much in the ocean. The ICW route meanders through the keys, and is pretty well protected. You go through little mangrove lined creeks, past uninhabited keys. We took the ICW all the way, except for the last 22 miles, we left the ICW through channel 5, and went up Hawkes Channel, to save about 12 miles. The ICW side was much nicer to sail through, because there was less wave motion, and the scenery is beautiful, plus the water is crystal clear and between 6-10 feet most of the time. You could definitely spend a good amount of time just going to all the Keys.

There is a difference in people and attitudes also, once you cross into the Keys. People here seem relaxed and happy, and they take pride in there relaxed lifestyle. Just to give an idea about some of the people. I saw a pick up truck here, that said “Snow Removal” on a sign on the roof. One musician here was singing a song that went, “I just came down for the weekend, that was 35 years ago”.  In Key West, there is a guy that turned his tricycle into a rolling disco party, not to make money, just for fun.

Our plan is to stay here till June, then take the boat up to Georgia to get hauled out. So now we are going to spend our days swimming, going to the beach, going to Key West and relaxing.

Here some Photos:

By the time I got all this done, and got a shower, it was around 2. We ended up leaving around 3, and we made it about 15 miles to Lake Boca Raton. This is a nice anchorage. There were 2 other boats there. The following day we left early, to do the last 20 miles or so up to Fort Lauderdale and the New River.

The new river has 4 bridges before we got to the marina. The New River is very narrow and snakes back and forth. You can’t see around the corners. We did a poor job dealing with the bridges. The first one, we called too early, because on the chart plotter it looked like it was right around the corner. The first and second bridge are very close, and a boat was coming outbound, so the two bridges tried to time it so that they would let us through both bridges in one shot. But since we called too early, the other boat made it through both before we got to the first. The bridge tender scolded us. He said, “don’t say you are right around the corner till you are right around the corner”. So Nadia told them, “My husband told me to say that.”  So we went through the first one, and the second one was starting to close as we got close, and we thought he knew we were going through, since we had talked to him at the previous bridge, but then he scolded us again, “Are you coming through the bridge”, “Yes”, “I don’t know if your husband knows, but Coast Guard requires vessels to always notify bridges”.  So two down, third one was no problem. Then we thought that was it for the bridges, so we turned off the radio. But we came around the corner and there is another bridge, and a boat just went through, and the bridge was closing. We radio him, and he was not happy. He told us we should be monitoring the radio, and should have told him… So he made us do circles for 15 minutes and finally let us through. So I was happy to be done with those bridges.

Another bridge right before the new river gave us some problems too. The bridge was suppose to open at 45 after the hour. We had to gun the engine from the previous bridge to make it in time. So around 40 after, I call, no response, I try again, no response. Wait a little, call again, no response. Eventually, I am right at the bridge, and no one is in the operator room, and there is no response on the radio. So eventually, Nadia calls on the phone. The lady answers and says the next opening is at quarter after, and it is 50 after right now. So Nadia wasn’t going for that, and told her, “No, we were here before 45 after and you didn’t respond.” So the lady said, “Okay, I will open it, I had an emergency”. And then some grumpy old guy on a little 20 foot, very manoeuvrable, motor boat, came up behind me and says “Get out of the navigable channel, the bridge doesn’t open for 10 minutes.” He had tons of room to go around me, but another boat was coming the other way, and he could not wait for 20 seconds, and didn’t know that the bridge was opening for us. I just told him, there is plenty of water to go around me. He got really mad, which I think is pretty funny.

Overall, it was a pretty easy trip. It was a lot nicer this time, going through all the bridges, because we broke it into two days. Last year we did the 23 bridges, 35 miles, all in one day, and it took 10 hours. We actually wanted to go outside, but the weather didn’t cooperate.

So we plan on being here for a week or two. We are starting to think, it might have been better to go North instead of South, because it is really hot here. We are hoping the Keys will be a little cooler.

So we stayed in Sebastian for a while, stopped in Vero Beach for 2 days. Vero is a nice place to stop, because they have a city run mooring field. Usually government run projects are not run well, but I have to say, that most of the city run marinas and moorings are very nice, and Vero is no exception. They have a dinghy dock, laundry, lounge with WIFI, and there are free city buses that pick you up right there. It is definitely a convenient cruiser stop. After Vero we went to Fort Pierce, and ended up having to stay 2 extra days. I was looking in the cockpit locker and saw a black water mark coming from our engine exhaust. So I had to replace the hose. Luckily the dockmaster at the marina offered us a ride to west marine to pick it up. So the next day I had to do some  spelunking into the locker and the engine compartment. I basically had to fold myself in half to get to the hose in the engine compartment, at one point I thought I might not be able to get out, I was jammed into the compartment so well… It took about 2 hours. Also I noticed the fuel lift pump had a little leak, but I could not get the part there, so we decided to get it later. So we left for Lake Werth, aka North Palm Beach.

This is were the social commentary starts… There is a huge anchorage there. It took a good 9-10 hours, so the first night we stayed on the boat. The next we went to some stores, and the market, and ate out for dinner. We decided to stay one more day, and go to the beach. So we packed our backpack, got our beach umbrella, and put on our swim suits. We rowed over to the “Dinghy Dock”, which is really a little sandy area under a little road bridge. It looks horrible, and there are messages spray painted on the walls “High theft area”. Some one setup a cable to lock your dinghy to. It does not give you a very welcoming feeling. So we looked on google maps, and it showed that we were around 1 mile from the beach. We had our trash from the boat that we wanted to dispose of, and the temperature was in the high 80′s with no wind. We started walking, and we kept walking, and walking… On either side of the road were very high thick hedges so you could not see through, and on the other side of the hedges were large pointed fences. Then we came up to a private gated communtiy, with a security gaurd. A little farther up, a sign says “Danger Guard Dogs”, this is all for the same gated community. We walked about 2 miles, and finally a sign read “John D. Macaurthur Park”. So we thought we were close, so we kept walking, and walking, and finally we looked at google maps on our phone, and it showed that the beach was parrallel to the road we were on, and it would be about another 3 miles before the road converged with the beach. So we figured the only way to the beach is through the gated community. And you are not allowed in the gated community, so effectively they own the beach. I had always thought that no one owned the beach, that it was there for all to enjoy, not just the super wealthy, and I thought that they must have some way to get to the beach. So we walked back, with our trash in hand, sweating profusely, and stopped to talk to the guard at the gated community. He said “yeah the beach is just down there a half a mile, but that is for the residents only.” So I asked what was the closest way to the beach and he said that we had to go to the park. So even though the beach was around a half a mile away from us, we would have to walk around 5 miles to get to it, EACH WAY. Needless to say I was pretty angry and upset that this would be allowed in the land of the free, where all people are suppose to be equal. This seemed like we were back several hundred years during the times of nobles and peasants.  I don’t think this kind of thing would go over well in New Jersey, and in fact many states like California and Hawaii have had cases like this go to court and usually the people win over the landowner who wants to own the beach. All over the world, in general beaches have always been available for all to use, but I guess the residents at the “Lost Tree Club” feel that they deserve to own the beach, and keep out anyone that is not wealthy enough to afford these mansions.

There is not much more to say about the topic, but if I was a resident of this area, which I never will be, I would definitely take this up to the courts, although the people living there probably bought the judges off.

On a happier note, we left North Palm Beach, although it was not easy. We had winds of 15-20MPH against us, and a tide of a half a knot against, while trying to go to Lantana. We probably averaged 4 knots to make the 18 miles, but we were running the engine at around 2,300. We had an exciting docking experience in Lantana. We called ahead and the told us to go into slip 27. So at first I went up to the dock area and circled around, trying to get an idea of where they wanted us, and which way we would be docking. The wind was very strong, and docks are close together so you don’t have much room to manuever. So I couldn’t tell where we were suppose to go, so I decided to just go for it. As we were coming in the depth sounder rang at 7 foot. It rings for about 5 seconds and then stops. But I was in the marina, so I figured it would be deep enough, and I was more worried about where to dock and the wind. So we start going down the aisle of slips, I didn’t see any numbers, so we kept going, and we saw a boater and yelled to him, asking where 27 was, right then we came to a stop, we were on the bottom. I tried reversing, but we were not moving. The slip was one behind us, so if some one from the marina was there, we would have been fine. The boater informed us that is was an extra low tide. So Nadia rowed 2 lines over on the Dinghy and tied them to pilings, and after about 10 minutes on the winches we were floating again. We got into the slip without much fuss. So we are docked here and the fuel pump should be here tomorrow. We plan on breaking the next 35 miles to Fort Lauderdale into two days, since there are about 20 bridges. Then we plan to stay in Fort Lauderdale for a little while.

Boats at Anchor near Lake Werth Inlet

Ridiculous Mega Yachts

After spending 3-4 weeks in St. Mary’s, GA, we finally got moving. We had a few projects we wanted to take care of before we left.

One big project was to install 2 propane lockers in the cockpit. Originally our boat had CNG, but since you can’t really obtain CNG easily, we had to convert the oven/stove to LPG. Luckily Seaward sold a kit to convert it, so I did that last year before we left. At that time, I bought these stainless steel propane tank holders, that attach to the back of the boat. They worked okay, but I hated how the looked, hanging off the back of the boat, with the propane hose and electrical wires dangling. So I decided to build 2 boxes, which I would bolt on either side of the captains chair. So I built the boxes out of plywood, glued them together, then coated them in a fiberglass cloth, and epoxied them completely, inside and out. Then I used Bondo to smooth them out, and finally painted them. They came out great, but they did take a lot of time to complete. And the big benefit is now we have nice high chairs to sit on when steering. Before we would have to stand up a lot, to get a good view of what was in front of us, especially if we had the dinghy on the foredeck. Now we can sit back relax and steer with our feet, literally. I don’t have a good picture of them done and installed, but I will get one soon and post it. Here is what they looked like before the fiberglass.

Propane Box, before glassing

So it took a while to paint them and drill all the holes in the boat, but they are in, and I am really happy with how they turned out.

Another project which Nadia tackled by herself was refinishing the hatch and companionway teak. She sanded everything nicely, and then put four coats of cetol, and will be putting two coats of gloss over that. The hatch looks really nice now. I will get a pic up soon.

We did a bunch of other little things, and spent some time traveling around the area, since we had our car. We also made some friends, and had a relaxing, and good time.

But it was nice to get moving again, and if you click on the globe you can see our progress. There are two links on the right under location, one to our first trip map, and one to our current trips map.

Right now we decided to stop in Sebastian, FL because we liked staying at this marina last year, and we got a really, really good rate. So we are enjoying ourselves, going to the beach, reading, renting movies… They have a great free bus system here too, so it easy to get to Vero Beach or the Mall.

My brother is down in Florida for the week, and there is a good chance he might stop by, and we are planning on going to the Kennedy Space Center. I have been wanting to go for a while, but there is no public transportation, so we were going to wait till we got back to our car to go, but now it looks like we might go Saturday.

So that is the latest news. Not much excitement coming down so far, everything has been working fine on the boat. We have been mostly motoring with a little motor sailing too. But the weather has been sunny, warm, and not too windy. Our plan is to leave here Sunday or Monday, and try to make good time down to Fort Lauderdale, where we want to spend a week. And then take our time from Fort Lauderdale to Marathon, since we have not gone down that far south before. We hope to spend around a month in Marathon, and then we are not sure if we will come back on the West or East Coast of Florida.

Sebastian Fog

Rising Sun

Pelican

Nadia at the helm

So that was the end of that chapter of our sailing adventure. We stayed in St. Mary’s a few days, rented a van one way, loaded all of our stuff up, secured the boat well and headed back to Philly.

Nadia had planned a trip to visit her Mother for two months in August, so my plan was to go back to the boat for a month and work on some boat projects. So for the month of September, I drove my car down there, and cleaned up the deck, refinished some of the teak, polished some of the stainless, and so on. It was a nice relaxing trip. I explored St. Mary’s and went down to Jacksonville a few times. I’m looking forward to going to this Mexican restaurant in St. Mary’s again, which I frequented.

After that, I drove back up to Philly, and Nadia got back, and we really lucked out, because we had rented out our condo, but the girl that rented it, needed to move out, so we got our place back, perfect timing. We decided to enjoy our place, and living on land, for a while, because before that we were kind of roaming from my parents to Nadia sisters, and wherever, without a place of our own.

So you may have looked at the map and saw that we were in Canada, and all over the Caribbean, well obviously it wasn’t on our boat. We went on a road trip up to Bruce Peninsula Park in Ontario. This park is awesome. We camped, hiked and cooked out. Even though it rained a good amount of the time, we had a good time. We stopped in Toronto for one night, and stopped in Niagara falls. Overall it was a great trip, and I would highly recommend Bruce Peninsula Park.

As for going all over the Caribbean, that was on a cruise ship. I know people are pretty divided on cruise ships, and honestly we went on one cruise before, and promised we wouldn’t go on one again, because it just wasn’t our cup of tea. But… we were looking for a cheap vacation and we thought about another road trip, but the cost of hotels and all that adds up, and the cruise was very low priced. We paid $650 each for 11 nights, which included our room, our food and all the activities, with 5 stops in various islands in the Caribbean. Well we really enjoyed ourselves, and this cruise was so much different then the one we went on before. Sure the cruise has some negative things, like only having about 8 hours in each place, and getting off the ship in a huge herd of tourists, but for a very cheap, very luxurious vacation, you can’t even come close. It also gave us a taste of the five different islands we stopped at, which were Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, USVI, Haiti(privately owned cruise ship area, not the real Haiti), St. Martin and St. Kitts. We liked all the places except the cruise ship owned beach in Haiti.

So we have been in Philly for the last couple months. I have been doing some side work programming. We had to do some work on our rental property, and we have a tenant lined up to move into our condo in February. So we are starting to get ready to move back to the boat. Our plan right now is to drive down to the boat, work on it in St. Mary’s for a week or two, and then head down to the Keys for a little while, and finally bring it back up to the North East. But are plans are written in pencil, so they might change.

Oh, and I changed the look and feel of the site a little. You should be able to comment, but I will have to approve them to prevent Spam. Hope everyone is doing well and don’t hesitate to contact us.

So I will start were we left off, at Gauna Cay. We stayed for two nights. The second day we went back to Nippers, and had lunch and went snorkeling off the beach. The snorkeling was nice, the lunch was okay. The rest of the day we just hung out in the two salt water pools there. We would have liked to stay longer, but we thought it would be better to get moving North, since we wanted to get back to the states by the end of the month.

So we left Guana, and had a very nice sail through the whale passage, and back over to Green Turtle. We went back to White Sound, where they have the nice resort and marina with a pool. We were only planning on staying for a day or two, but the weather forecast was calling for bad and worsening conditions in the gulf stream. We needed about 3 days to get over to the Gulf Stream, and the weather stayed bad for about a week. So we stayed there in Green Turtle for a week. We spent most of the time at the pool, or going over to the little town of New Plymouth. The resort had a really good buffet with Fried Fish and many other good side items, the one night.

Eventually they were calling for 2 foot waves in the gulf, so it was time to get moving. Our plan was to go back to Foxtown, and anchor there, and then go up to Grand Cay, which is one of the Northern most cays, that is inhabited. But our plan changed, the wind was out of the North West, so we went to Allens Pensacola instead. We thought this would give us better protection from the waves while anchored. It didn’t. So we spent the night being rocked. The next morning, it was still out of the west, so we could stay there and rock or get going and rock on the way. We thought it best to get moving. We were wrong. Once we left, we started pounding into the waves, and were not making very much speed. We tried a different angle, but nothing worked, so we just revved the engine up to 2800 RPM’s and plowed into the waves. Normally at this speed, we would be easily making 5.7 knots, but we were probably averaging, around 3-3.5 knots. And the motion of the boat was like one of those pirate ship rides at a fair. The bow of the boat would launch into the air, bang down in the trough of the next wave, the next wave would pick us up higher, bang us harder into the next trough, and then the third wave would launch the bow way, way up, and slam us down, nearly bringing our forward momentum to a halt.

So we were going so slow, that we wouldn’t make it to Grand Cay by dark, so we went to plan b, and headed for the East side of Great Sale Cay. It was pretty much the same conditions all the way, until we got about 3-4 miles from Great Sale, which gave us some wave size reduction. Once we were about 1 mile from Great Sale, the water was calm again. We were both physically beat up by this time, and were very happy to be anchored, and the wind was suppose to calm down at night, and it was a very calm nice night.

The next day, we left for Grand Cay, and we motor sailed at a good speed. It took about 4-5 hours to get up there.

We had a great bit of excitement, almost right away. It was such a nice day, I figured I would give fishing a try again. This time I tried a different lure, and about an hour after we left, the fishing line started whizzing out at full speed. I definitely caught something. So I grabbed the rod, and stopped the line from going out. Nadia turned the boat around, and I started reeling in. Then I saw it jump, and it was huge, at least 3 feet. So I kept reeling and reeling, and it jumped out again. Nadia got the work gloves and pliers ready. After about 5 minutes I had him near the boat, and it was about a 3 foot long Baricuda. I am not much of a fisherman, and I was not really sure how I was going to get the hook out of his razor tooth covered mouth. So I brought him real close and then I went to reach down and try and get the hook out, and he snapped at me… So then I lifted him up onto the side of the boat, and had to struggle to get the hook out with the pliers. I felt bad, because I could see he was starting to loose his spirit, and I didn’t want to kill him. You can’t eat barracuda, because of cigueratella poisoning, that many of them have. Eventually I did get the hook out, and set him free. It took him about 20-30 seconds, but he started to swim slowly away, so I think he survived. After that, Nadia felt bad about hurting the fish, so she didn’t want me to fish anymore. So I put my rod away.

Coming into Grand Cay, is pretty shallow, there were spots were we had inches below the keel. I really did not like Grand Cay, and probably would not go back again, unless we need somewhere good to anchor, because it does offer 360 degree protection. The town was not really well maintained. They had a generator running right in the middle of the town. Oh, and when we pulled in, we were the only sailboat. Grand Cay is a hub for fishing boats. They range from little center consoles, to huge multi-million dollar sport fishing boats. Now I am not against fishing boats, but some of the boats are ridiculous, and ungodly wasteful. The amount of fuel some of them burn is unreal. They will burn hundreds of gallons an hour! And I don’t dislike motor boaters, we have met many on the trip, and had good conversations, but many of the ones at Grand Cay, were not the kind of people I like to be around.

Once we got into Grand Cay, we wanted to fill our fuel tank before leaving in the morning to begin our crossing. So we go over towards the fuel dock, and there is one other boat waiting. So we wait for about 15 minutes, and finally get over to the dock. We tie up, and no one says anything to me. So I finally ask a guy that looks like he “works” there, “Is there only one diesel pump?” He says yes, and leaves. So we are waiting, for about 20 minutes, for a motor boat to finish fueling. And then we have to wait another 20 minutes for the other motor boat to fill up. Then it is our turn, I fill up our tank, it takes 10 gallons. Then I give the pump up to a guy that I think works there, and he sets it on the dock. Then I go ask another guy that I think works there if I can pay, he says, “I can’t, you have to see Rosie”. This marina is called Rosie’s Marina. I happened to see some one say hi to Rosie, so I knew who he was. The guy said, “he should be back in a few minutes”. So I figure, we are in the Bahamas, things move a little slower here, and I relax. Time starts ticking away, 30 minutes go by, and I see the guy again. I say, “Do you know when Rosie will be back?” He says, “Oh he didn’t let you pay yet?” Then heads off down a street. We wait another 20 minutes. Then Nadia spots Rosie. I take off after him, down the street, onto the next dock. I make my way through the crowds of drunk motor boaters, that don’t move over, to let you walk by, all the way to the end of the dock. “Excuse me, Rosie”, Rosie gives a quick look, and then starts talking to another guy. Eventually, I say excuse me and tell him I want to pay for my fuel, he says ” I will be over in a few minutes”. So I go back to the boat, and in the mean time, there are three motor boats waiting to dock and get fuel. I guess Rosie doesn’t care, because he knows he is the only fuel station for about 60-70 miles, haha. He eventually makes his way over, I pay, and we get off the dock. It only took a little over two hours to get 10 gallons of diesel!

So we go to the center of the harbor and anchor, and there is one other sailboat! We wanted to go out to eat, so we paddled our dinghy to shore. On the way, we got a comment from a motor boater sitting on his boat. “How long did it take to get over here”, making a joke about us crossing the gulf on our dinghy. Motor boaters are all comedians. The first thing they say to you always has to be some kind of joke. We really felt out of place at Grand Cay. So we walked down the one street in the town, and the only restaurant open was Rosie’s Place. So there are two entrances, the first one we go in says Lounge entrance, we open that door, and the music is blaring, we turn around, there must be a restaurant door. So we go around the corner, and a door says restaurant door. There is a waitress leaning on the inside of the glass door, so I knock on it, and she looks at me like I am crazy and says go around to the Lounge entrance. So we go back to the lounge door. So we go in the Lounge, and try to find a door to the restaurant. I find it and it is locked. So I knock, no one answers, I ask the bar tender, and she yells to the same waitress that told us to go around. The waitress opens the door, and has a big smile, and says come on in. We sit at our table, and about 3 minutes later another group comes to the restaurant door, the waitress opens the door for them. I did not understand what happened…

So we both ordered fried chicken. They brought out conch fritters at appetizers, kind of like we get bread in the US. Nadia doesn’t eat seafood, so I started eating them, I ate way too many, and then I ate my fried chicken, and french fries. Bad Idea… My stomach was not liking me. So we went back to the boat, and things got worst. I had to lay down, and then all of the sudden I was sick. Everything in my stomach ended up in the sink. I must have got food poisoning, because I was uncontrollably sick. I spent half the night curled up on my side. Finally, after another sickness bought, I felt better and got some sleep.

When we woke up, I felt okay enough to get going, so I put the dinghy up on deck, and put everything away, in preparation for the crossing. Our plan was to sail about 50 miles to the edge of the Bahama Banks. At the edge there was a spot on the chart that was suppose to be 6 feet. We planned to anchor there. After that it drops down to thousands of feet.

We made average time, the waves got bigger and bigger as we got closer to the spot. We left around 10 in the morning and were approaching the “anchorage” around 7PM. The depth was around 30 feet and was suppose to get down to 18, and then finally 6 were we would anchor. Well we were right were the chart said the 6 feet was, and it said 18 on our depth sounder. The waves were still too big to anchor, so we decided to just go through the night. We didn’t want to sail back at night. We wanted to anchor, and then leave around 5-6AM in the morning and sail all during day light. Well we didn’t have much choice. So we had to rearrange our plan in our head, instead of sleeping after 9 hours of uncomfortable sailing, we were going to continue sailing for another 12 hours. Once we got off of the banks, the waves actually were better. They were still big, but much more consistent, so you could kind of steer with them, and reduce the rolling of the boat. But it was still really rolling, to the point were you had to hold on some times. The trip back was much better then the trip there. We ended up keeping the jib out almost the whole way, but it was pretty light wind, so when you rolled on a wave, the sail would flap back and forth. We took turns the whole night, and I managed to get some sleep. Nadia said she couldn’t sleep. We ended up getting to the Fort Pierce inlet around 6:30AM, and the waves were really big and confused there. There were many little fishing boats heading out for the day. Some were very small, and flying off the tops of waves. I would not go out on one of those boats in those waves.

Once we got into the inlet, past the jetties, the waves stopped, it was calm and sunny and we were very happy. We went about 2 miles into a marina and tied up. It felt really good to be back in the US.

Nippers Bulldozer

Starfish at Green Turtle

Ray at Green Turtle

Anchored at Green Turtle

On our way to Grand Cay

Beach at Green Turtle

Barracuda I Caught

Freckles Lounging in the cockpit

Nippers is kind of a super bar and grill. It is right on the beach. It has coral reefs that you can snorkel out too. It has two pools, several levels of decks with chairs and tables. It can probably take care of 200 people at a time. The gift shop floor is sand. But today is the day after the party. Every Sunday they have a wild pig roast, and when they say wild pig roast, I think it is a wild pig, and the place gets pretty wild, so we are told. But we are here on a calm day, and just relaxing by the pools, and ocean.

Tomorrow we plan to bring our snorkel gear and enjoy the third largest barrier reef in the world. Besides Nippers there is another place called Grabbers, that we will probably check out also.

It is very different here in the Bahamas then in the US. You kind of have to see it to understand, but it is very secluded and empty. There are no big stores, no big markets, no fast food, no high rise buildings, really there is not much. We went into a little market here, and they had some onions, potatoes, some fruit, and that is it. The more populated islands, like Green Turtle, Elbow Cay, and Marsh Harbor have big markets, what we would think as a little general store in the US. Marsh Harbor has the biggest markets, but the prices of certain things are very high. This is from the crazy tax system they have here. Basically there are certain foods that are not taxed, like rice, vegetables… But any snack food, sodas, most drinks, are very expensive, like 2 to 3 times the price in the states.

We plan to stay in Guana for 2 or 3 nights, and then we will go back through the “Whale Passage”, once the weather is good. We might stop at Green Turtle for a night, and then we are going to try and make it to Double Breasted Cay in two days. And then Grand Cay is only 2 miles away, where we can fill up our diesel tank, and wait for good weather to cross the Gulf Stream back to Fort Peirce. This time, we are not going until we get 2 feet or less on the gulf stream, and we are going to leave very early in the morning, so we can cross during daylight.

Here are some photos, from Hope Town, and Nippers.

Hope Town Lighthouse

Hope Town Lighthouse

Hope Town Lighthouse

Hope Town Lighthouse

Hope Town Lighthouse

Hope Town Lighthouse

Hope Town Lighthouse

Hope Town Lighthouse

Hope Town Lighthouse

Hope Town Lighthouse

Nadia, Andrew and Karen

Nadia, me and Karen

Nippers

Nippers

And up until last night, the only place we really liked the food, was in Fox Town. Well last night we ate at Waters Edge, and the food was great. As we were eating, we were planning our next dinner there.

Hope Town has a relatively small harbor, so you can’t really anchor, because there are many moorings. So we picked up a mooring. We plan on staying here for 3 nights total, and then will head over to Gauna Cay.

We went on our Blue Hole dive on Abaco. We went with Marvin from Dive Abaco, and we had a great time, and it was great talking with Marvin, and getting to know the Bahamian culture more. The blue dive was very different then a reef dive. We first drove about 30 minutes from Marsh Harbor, and went on a dirt road for a while. As we were driving on the dirt road, we saw a wild fire, right next to us. There was a good amount of smoke, but it wasn’t a huge fire, just the underbrush and the occasional pine tree burning. Then we arrived at the hole. It was about 150 feet in diameter, and the walls look like you are in a cave, which is kind of what it is. The first 50 feet of the dive is clear fresh water, then you get to a sulfer liquid, which goes for another 20 feet. Once you descend into the sulfer, you have to turn on your flashlight. The light goes about 2 inches, so you can’t see anything. You just go hand over hand down a rope to make your way down.

I was the first in line, so I started descending, and eventually made it below the sulfur layer, to the salt water. Then you can see where ever you point your flashlight. So I get there and I am all alone, and I am waiting for Marvin and Nadia to get below the sulfur, and I am waiting. And I start to worry. Did Nadia have a problem? Should I go back up to see what is happening? It is very dark… After about a minute I see a faint light in the sulfur, and they made it. Nadia was having trouble equalizing the pressure in her ears. We all gave the okay hand gesture. So we had agreed to descend to 90 feet. As recreational divers, the deepest we are suppose to go is 120 feet. We ended up down at 100 feet, our deepest dive. At this point you look around with your limited view of your light, and you see huge stalactites. National Geographic had actually done a dive at this blue hole, and went deep in the caves. They use lines as they go into the caves, so they can find their way out. They spend hours down there. We weren’t that gutsy, so we stayed and looked around for 3-5 minutes. You use large amounts of air at that depth, so you can’t stay long. So we started to ascend, and went through the sulfur again. When you get to the sulfur you smell that familiar rotten egg smell. We made our way back up to the surface slowly. It was definitely worth the trip, even though you don’t see any wildlife, besides a crab or two, it is a very unique dive.

We are going to head over to climb the light house this afternoon, and tomorrow we are going to a breakfast buffet, and then plan to spend the day at the pool and beach.

Coming into Hope Town

Coming into Hope Town

Hope Town

Hope Town

Hope Town

Hope Town

Hope Town

Hope Town

Hope Town

Hope Town

We had a small bit of excitement on the way. After leaving the harbor, Nadia steered us into the wind so I could raise the main sail. Well I went up to the mast and unzipped the sail cover, and there I was face to face with a 2 inch long, huge cockroach. Now, this did not bother me much, the thing that scared me was that if Nadia saw this, we might end up being in a hotel and bug bombing the whole boat, and all the work involved in this task. So I tried to grab our little friend by the antenna, but he caught on to this, and took off inside the sail. So I thought, I could probably just hoist the main and he would go flying in the wind. Well I pulled the rest of the cover off and he went flying, unfortunately, he flew right next to Nadia, and she went running and screaming down below. She is deathly afraid of bugs. So no one is steering, I have to run back to the cockpit, flick the roach down wind and he is gone. Nadia wouldn’t come up in the cockpit for a while, so I tried to get the boat to steer in the wind, then I would hurry back to raise the main. Eventually, Nadia calmed down and came out and steered again. We got both sails out, and there were no more roaches. We sailed the whole way to Marsh Harbor at a good speed. I started trolling a fishing line behind us, and about 30 minutes before arriving, the line started to run out of the reel. I was excited, I had caught something… So I run over to the rod and try to stop the line from flying out, but I don’t know how to adjust the tension so the line would stop going out. The line went all the way out, and luckily my knot held. Nadia got the boat turned around and we headed towards the line, and I began reeling in the line as fast as I could. After about 5-10 minutes, the line was almost all the way in. So I pulled the line out of the water, and all I had was some grass and rock on the hook! The lure must have dropped to the bottom, and snagged the ground… So no fish.

But we made it here, and anchored, and have been exploring the area. Tomorrow, we are going to scuba dive in a blue hole. It is basically a hole that was formed from water pouring through the limestone ground. I will give a full story of what it is like after the dive. We are planning on leaving either tomorrow afternoon, or more likely Friday morning, to Hopetown, which is suppose to be one of the nicest towns in the Abacos. The weather has been very windy lately, so the sea of Abaco is suppose to be uncomfortable. Friday is suppose to calm down a little.