2009 Log
3/1 to 3/15/2009
This is our log for 2009; our other voyages are in Prior Voyages.
We plan to post and update at least weekly. We move the older portions of the log to history; pages accessible at the bottom of the page. Join our voyage!
Updated on 06/22/2009
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Finally back on line! We were off line for two weeks due to a computer crash. 3/1/09 – The raft broke up around mid-morning. Watching it disassemble was more fun than watching it build as the wind was gusting into the 20 knot range. Both boats followed John back to Marina Sol Bu. We will hang here until Tuesday when Steve will be back with our laptop – hopefully running. I’ve been slowly installing the programs I have disks for on the newer laptop. It’s a nasty job and I keep reminding myself the a computer is a time saving device. Yah, sure, and Attila the Hun was a missionary. Around 2:30pm a heavy rain squall blew in. The boat really needed a dowsing to wash off some of the salt we’d accumulated on our sail here. As quickly as the rain stopped so did the wind. Then the temperature started dropping. Soon jackets and sweaters were the preferred apparel. 3/2/09 – We woke to a bright cold morning. We had the AC heat pump on all night as a strong cold front brought temperatures in the 30’s to the Miami area. I did some minor boat maintenance in the morning, upgrading the mid arch supports to alleviate flexing in heavy seas. Eight hours on the new laptop, loading programs and then downloading the current updates for those programs… repeat after me, this is a labor saving device. Along the way I downloaded a few photos the blimp took of the raft-up. John & Nell have two Norwegian couples as guests this week. We’ve met them several times for sundowners and conversation. It’s always interesting to hear another slant on US politics. Not always complimentary, but interesting. There is wonderment at the mess we’ve created and concern over how it is affecting them. 3/3/09 - Another cool day greeted us… We had our morning coffee, and then I headed up to John’s office to work on the new laptop’s software. XP went through a 2 hour update, service pack 3. I still don’t have an answer for FrontPage; a new copy is pricey and Microsoft has announced they are phasing it out. Steve came back with the bad news that our old laptop is toast. By refrigerating the hard drive he was able to retrieve a few files but not enough to really help. At least we know now not to hold out hope for that beast. A Boca friend lost his wife so we are staying for the celebration of her life. He’s lucky to have a large circle of good friends from all over the world to help him through this time. 3/4/09 – Cool again, dark clouds just north of us. Ruth & I had our morning coffee in the cockpit before I headed up to John’s office to work on setting up our new computer. Joy! Ruth came up with the data needed to reinitiate our air card. Way to go Rutie, your filing system rocks. I met Steve at noon; he’d recovered our Outlook Express files but the rest of the hard drive is toast. Well, we are where we are. Time to move on; we’re bidding on FrontPage on eBay so we can get our publisher back up. Hate to buy obsolete software but it is the most practical solution. Particularly given that we want to open another site. Buddy has been sitting on my shoulder all night watching me work on the computer. She’s been very settled, interested in what I’m doing. 3/5/09 - Cool, sunny with a few scattered clouds, a nice morning. I spent most of the day on computer issues. Downloading software upgrades. After nine days of loading and upgrades this is feeling like a new career. In the evening we visited our friend and his family. Our hearts are with them through these times. 3/6/09 – Dawn revealed a rerun of yesterday’s weather. Likewise I did a rerun of yesterday. At least now most of the software is on and I’m getting it to work together – a lot like herding cats. Ruth walked to the nearby mall and bought some provisions as we are eating our way through the “Bahamas” inventory. She also scored a copy of FrontPage on eBay so we will be able to get our web publishing caught up. We’ll have to wait for the package before we can depart Miami. Brad found a great intruder alarm package at Home Depot. We and they are installing it on our boats as a deterrent to sneak thieves. Yes, there is trouble in paradise… we want to keep it on the dock and not in our cabin at midnight. 3/7/09 – I think the weather machine is stuck. Every day the weather is like the day before with slight warming. We motored down the ICW to Fort Lauderdale, arriving early afternoon at an anchorage in Lake Sylvia. Bradd & Maeve took us by dinghy to a raw bar where we left the dinghy and crossed to a Winn-Dixie market for a few items. Back at the raw bar we met Lara and Patrick for boiled shrimp. Mmmummh! At the anchorage we visited Gypsy Poet to view the Lynx wireless booster the owner builds. We bought on for AA in hopes of improving our communications in the Bahamas. We were stressed last year by paying for air time we couldn’t use unless we went to the beach or bar. A quick test revealed 3 to 4 times the systems we could find without the antenna. Only time will tell if it is a good solution. 3/8/09 – Daylight savings, we took a late 9am start for Port Everglades and the ocean. What a perfect day for a long sail. Initially both AA and Sampatecho carried reefed sails. We stayed side by side until Bradd shook out the reef in the main. Then they slowly walked away from us. We’re paying the penalty for having the 3 blade fixed prop. We had a Oyster 55 pass us and try to catch Sampatecho… they finally did but only after putting their crew and guests along the weather rail. I have no idea how that Benneteau 390 goes that fast. I know part of it is Bradd’s ability. Enroute to No Name Harbor Bradd & Maeve caught a fish. We’d invited them for a beef shoulder dinner so they did the fish in seasoned cubes for an appetizer – very good! Tomorrow we go our separate courses; theirs leading to Cuba, ours to South Beach and on to the Bahamas (as soon as our software arrives). 3/9/09 – I was up at first light to see Sampatecho off. They will be in Marathon in two days, then off to Key West for their crossing to Cuba. After coffee while watching the sun rise in clearing skies we fired up the diesel and pointed our bow north skirting Key Biscayne and entering the ICW. We had to wait for the 11am West Venetian Causeway Bridge before anchoring near Ariel’s marina. I did a little repair on door screens for Ariel and Silver Girl. The screen fatigues at the top so I put lightweight black nylon band there to treat the screen more gently. It’s a feature I’ll put in any future doors. We joined Laureen, Miles along with Suzie and Don from Silver Girl for sundowners on Ariel. Afterwards we enjoyed an excellent meal on Ariel. This was our first chance to spend much time with them since their return. 3/10/09 – Yah, we woke to another beautiful morning… warmest of the past few weeks. My morning began with the replacement of 8 quartz bulbs in the guest berth with LEDs. This will reduce our energy consumption when we have guests aboard as the LEDs use 1/10th the power of the quartz. Yep, now guests can read in bed without me nervously watching the amp-hour consumption wind up. We received our new copy of FrontPage and loaded it today. Also had our South Beach Marine Police visit and signed another notice. Welcome back to South Beach. We're up and running again. Yeah! The new software is all working. We moved to an anchorage south of Fisher Island we'd not used before. It's a nice place to be. Tomorrow we'll head out at dawn for Bimini, another new destination for us. Miles will be right behind us by about an hour as he has to leave from Sunset. From our perspective it was time to get going. Wanderlust. Hopefully Evie and Amy and Lofton will join us there. 3/11/09 - Off to the Bahamas! We were up before dawn, deciding to delay our departure to give Ariel a chance to catch us. We were entering Government Cut when we heard them clear the West Venetian Causeway Bridge, about 20 minutes behind us. Our SkyMate weather forecast pretty much described the wind and seas we had crossing. We had to motor as the wind was on the nose as expected. On the plus side the seas were 1 to 1-1/2 foot making for a smooth ride. Ruth caught a 2' fish - species undetermined. It looked like a jack, maybe a tuna, we have 3 illustrated books of species and could not positively identify it. By 4pm we were on the Bahamas Bank heading for Mackie Shoal. After running in half mile deep water it's unnerving to be running at speed in 8 - 9 feet of water - whoa! We anchored at 7pm... no land in sight in any direction. No matter how often we've done this it still is eerie. It just ain't natural. 3/12/09 - Up at dark o'clock, heading east into the wind for Chub Cay Club on Frazier Hog Cay and Customs/Immigration. Enroute we saw large schools (flocks?) of flying fish. They take off like sparrows startled in a grain field. We also saw a 2-1/2' diameter sea turtle. We arrived at 4pm and scrambled to get to customs. Scrambled? We finally got there at 5pm but they still took care of our paperwork. $300 lighter I returned to the boat and swapped the yellow quarantine flag for the Bahamas courtesy flag... we're legal. Chub Cay charges $2.80/ft per night... but hey, it includes WIFI... water is $0.40/gal and electricity is metered (they didn't want to buy any from us and we didn't buy any from them). High, but tolerable if the WIFI worked - it didn't. Miles & Laureen joined us on AA for sundowners then went to the Chub Cay Club Restaurant - we tried to get to the internet. Our updates will likely be a little irregular the next 4 weeks while we sail the Bahamas. 3/13/09 - Miles was knocking on the hull at 7:30 to figure our game plan for the day. After looking at the weather forecast for the next few days we decided to head to Nassau in order to get to the Exumas. Again we saw flocks of flying fish. Ruth decided it was time to try her luck fishing again so she dropped a blue and black lure behind the boat. Our fuel tank was down to 1/4 and we started sucking air in the rough seas (we thought). We finally had to bear off our intended course so we could motor sail. The sail stabilized the boat so the engine could get enough fuel. Ruthie caught a Mahi Mahi, a monster. The reel disconnected from the rod during the fight as the fish ran and jumped. Ruth held the reel and cranked whil I held the rod. We finally boarded the fish... wow! I filleted it and it was in the cooler 20 minutes after we caught it. As we approached Nassau Harbor we got another hit. Ruthie landed a second Mahi Mahi slightly smaller than the first. I got that one filleted and in the cooler in 10 minutes as we need to get to the anchorage. What a day! 3/14/09 - We hit the fuel dock at 8am, filling the tank to rid ourselves of the fuel starvation problem (we thought). Ariel was ready to roll and we followed them out the east end of the Nassau Harbor. As we throttled up the engine coughed and slowed. Same problem as yesterday... darn. I replaced the secondary filter... no joy. I replaced the primary filter... again no joy and no fuel. We told Ariel to run ahead, we'd get there eventually. I kept tracking the missing fuel problem. Turned out it was a screen at the bottom of the fuel pickup. Can't get at that until we burn off about 5 hours of fuel. Yah, we had to fill the tank this morning. I used our bicycle pump to back blow the screen and got the engine running - at 2pm! Joy, finally! Running at power we took off after Ariel, 1-1/2 hours ahead of us. Okay, we ran to AlanCay with no problems other than we forget we had a fish line out... which promptly wound into our prop while anchoring - Cheech and Chong go boating. A looper whose contributions I've followed on the AGLCA web site, Russ Achzet, was anchored near us, M/V Total Return, a 57' Nordhavn. We radioed a hello and Russ stopped by later to met us. Miles and Laureen joined us on AA for grilled Mahi Mahi. We hardly put a dent in the fish supply. 3/15/09 - Another beaut... I know, knock it off. I put on my wet suit and dove to get the fish line off the prop. Took about 12 dives with the snorkel and a variety of tools before everything was cleared... argggh! Ruth's biggest catch of the trip - a 43 foot sailboat. Fortunately we had more line to re-rig the rod. Today was a project day - intruder alarm installed and a red (night vision) cockpit map light installed. I skinned four fillets and took them to Ariel for supper. Laureen sautéed them for dinner, served with rice and a vegetable medley of cauliflower, asparagus and broccoli - delicious. It's hard to believe it was the same fish we had last night. Mahi Mahi, you can grill it, you can broil it, you can blacken it, you can sauté it, you can marinate it, you can bread it or encrust it with almonds... you get the picture Forrest. We have a two week supply. |
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Buddy provides software advice... Digging for data
After our hard drive started acting erratically Steve retrieved a lot of our data by refrigerating the computer and extracting files. All our programs were lost so we had to start loading our new/used IBM and updating the old software to get back to where we were. All in all it took about 50 hours. Then we found there were a couple more folders and some tech info we needed from the old unit. Ruth and I figured if refrigeration worked, maybe air flow could do the same. We hooked up our shop vacuum to the louvers on the side of the computer and booted it. Joy! We were able to retrieve the info we needed. Our next step will be to try to salvage our photo files from January and February. We've been trying to get a good back-up on a USB hard drive we bought but are not certain the process is working. One back-up program wants to create a registry boot floppy (the computer doesn't have a floppy disk and the software doesn't ask for an alternative)... the other program says it can't perform the task and then appears to do it. Arrgghhh!
Diagonal parking in Marina Sol Bu - how to get 192' of boats in 140 feet of dock face.
An Osprey enjoys a fresh fish
Sampatecho trucking past Miami... she did a horizon job on us.
Moon rising over Fisher Island - an anchorage to ourselves and a full moon - kewl!
Ariel running east on Bahamas Bank - we could watch the waves in the new wax job on the dark hull. Back to the 3rd world Communications becomes a bane to our lives again. We've added Skype internet phone service to our arsenal along with a WIFI antenna to get more servers. The problem is the servers are so overwhelmed that they can't handle the traffic and they are connected to the internet at dial-up speed. Cellular is not an option unless you get a sim card and enroll with the Bahamas firm BATELCO. Iridium and Globalstar are other options. Iridium very expensive and Globalstar cheap and unreliable. I finally got a very slow WIFI connection via Beacon in the Chub Cay Marina at 2am - at least we got our mail. We got another connection at 7am, checking mail and the news/weather.
Early morning at Chub Cay, Ariel and AA make a sportfish sandwich
Ruth's first Mahi Mahi of the trip, Nice fish Ruthie.
Mahi Mahi #2. Ruth's a fish slayer |
2009 Logs
| Boca Raton, 1/1 to 1/15/09 | Boca Raton, 1/15 to 1/31/09 |
| Boca Raton to Miami, 2/1 to 2/15/09 | Miami/Boca/Lauderdale, 2/16 to 2/28/09 |
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