2010 Log
3/16 to 3/31/2010
This is the current period of our log for 2010. At the bottom of the page are links to this year's pass weeks; our earlier voyages are in Prior Voyages.
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Updated on 01/28/2011
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3/16/10 - After coffee I went in to the park to work. After looking up and thanking Henry and Andrew I spent the morning cleaning the mooring installation boat and cutting out hands (silhouettes for trail markers). Ruth spent the morning cleaning and reorganizing the boat. After lunch Ruth went to Boo Boo Beach and I went back to work... little projects like installing a sign, painting another one. Coming back from installing a sign at Loyalist Beach I overtook Bill Rohde and crew. Good to have the chance to catch up with them. It appears we'll be in the same waters for a couple of weeks so we should have a chance to get together. Ruthie opened the liquor cabinet and I noted I have to put a lock on that locker - that's where the bad spirits live. Baaadd spirits! 3/17/10 - Cloudy today, suppose to be another front coming in tonight. Fortunately we are in the North Mooring field so things won't be as rough if the wind pipes up. I worked again today, first on trail markers, then some boat repair and finally building furniture with Tom. We cut all the materials for a set of shelves and for a teak coffee table. Enjoyable day working with folks from Canada, the Netherlands and England. Back with Ruth on AA we had a movie night and a steak dinner. Excellent way to spend an evening while it sprinkled outside. 3/18/10 - Windy and sunny this morning. We have internet today so I published and Ruth made a lot of contacts. I worked all morning on a coffee table with Tom... it's looking way too good for its intended home on Owl. Miles and Laureen arrived about 2pm, stopping by to see me at work when they came in to register. They had flown their Code Zero headsail for the first time ever, at times making 11-12 knots over the ground. Miles had a big smile! Light rain arrived around 4pm, just a series of showers as Ruth picked me up from work. We had a potluck spaghetti dinner on Ariel, catching up with each other as while we'd sailed together crossing we hadn't seen each other since. It was a great evening catching up with their adventures. 3/19/10 - Overcast at dawn, nice wind from the NW. This will be my last day working as we'll head south unless the weather does something funky. It suppose to get down into the low 60's tonight... another front. Chum sent a VERY large file and locked up our e-mail this morning. I'm hoping I can figure out a way to delete it at the server. Turned out we were able to get it on the 3rd try. Usually these big files are picture attachments that haven't been compressed; the world isn't all on broadband folks. Miles and I worked for the park today... mainly on Owl installing shelf fiddles, packing gear and repairing a hole in the side of the hull where a 2-1/4" fitting had been removed. Tomorrow we plan on fiber-glassing portions of the deck. We had Miles & Laureen over for dinner and a movie. Ruth picked a pretty intense flic, "Untraceable". Good movie and one of the few older films Miles hadn't seen. 3/20/10 - Sunny with light winds. It's Saturday (I had to figure that out on the calendar). In the morning Miles and I went to work on Owl using fiberglass and resin to repair deteriorated sections of the deck. We got everything ground out in preparation for the repairs. After lunch we returned to the Owl while Laureen and Ruth returned to their exploration of the eastern beaches. We ran out of materials and they ran out of steam by 4pm. Saturday night is beach get together night at the Park. It was a great chance to meet new folks, talk with the staff and graze. 3/21/10 - Another beautiful day in the park. We've stayed to outwait another front coming through. Last night was fairly windy, 20 - 25 knots, as was most of the morning. Not a problem for our boats but the wind direction was right against our intended course. Big decision, enjoy a quiet day in paradise or go to sea and get your brains beat out... what'd be your choice? Ruth and I enjoyed the sun and read most of the day. A Bananaquet came to visit our boat. It flew in the cabin and startled Buddy by landing on top of her cage. After checking out the other cabins a couple of times it left. We're wondering if it was one of those that Ruth fed the other day. Miles and Laureen did a little exploring by dinghy, stopping to plan our next move after Monday's expected winds. Popcorn and movie night today. Had to run the diesel for a short time before the movie so we didn't run the batteries down too far; we'd made water most of the day so we didn't have a full charge at sundown. I'd like to see if we can find enough resin to finish Owl tomorrow. I hate leaving with a project half done... waiting for someone with the right skill set to finish it. 3/22/10 - Lightning woke me around 5am, no thunder though so the weather was far away. When I got up at dawn no storms were visible but the sky was gray - looking like rain. Ruth stayed on board while I went in for some sanding on Owl, leaving her safe to use. Light mist prevented my finishing the fiberglass jobs so I worked on one of the boats until noon. After lunch I went back to work and Ruth went to the office to check us out, then she went hiking. I worked with Tom most of the afternoon, building an Epay (pronounced e-pay) teak-like hardwood picnic table for the rangers. Tom does a great job of design and prep; the job went together in an afternoon. Ruth stopped in to watch us finish up and we said good-bye to all as we leave tomorrow. We bought some WiFi time tonight to get our e-mail and publish our site. Wouldn't you know, message 27 of 41 was a roadblock and stalled the connection. We had to download everything a second time and it stalled on 27 again - aarrrgghhhh! I finally got on our account site and found nothing; apparently Yahoo was just having problems. Ruth found a school of beautiful 2-3' fish sheltering under our hull and promptly adopted them. 3/23/10 - A beautiful morning. A little internet work we're on the road again... after a relatively mild front passage last night we're on our way Georgetown via Staniel Cay. We sailed, then motor sailed to Staniel arriving in about 4 hours. Ruth fished once we were outside the park boundaries but had no takers. We were disappointed to hear that the Thunderball Restaurant had closed at Staniel. That's been a landmark for years. At Staniel we fueled, took on water ($0.50 per gallon) and anchored just above Ariel. Alex and Irise stopped by to say hi, like us they will be heading to Georgetown tomorrow. Ruth tossed one of her stick snakes in the dinghy startling them - still a brat. 3/24/10 - We were greeted by a beautiful dawn with light balmy breezes. By 7:30 we had the anchor up and were heading for the Exumas sound in the company of Ariel and Alaeris. Ruth put out two lines but found no takers again today. She's selective, going for Wahoo or Mahi-Mahi, game fish that reputedly like a fast moving lure. We sailed and motor-sailed, pushing hard to make the roughly 60 mile run to Georgetown, arriving at 4pm. The inlet was smooth even with east winds of 10 knots, a piece of cake with Ruth at the helm. Soon we were snugly anchored in Monument Bay. 3/25/10 - Beautiful morning! I watched the sun rise over the monument as I had my morning cuppa. Miles stopped by to borrow our salinity tester as his system was reporting increasingly high ppm. After talking to the distributor they decided his instrument had never been calibrated and ours was reading about where his system should be. Actually our system is producing a little higher quality than his which makes sense as ours has much less time on it. We read before lunch, then headed for the beach. Ruth found a few shells and a good sunburn. We saw some of the largest starfish I've ever seen - over 16" in diameter. Supper was on Alaeris, BYOM, we brought an excellent pair of rib-eye steaks. Had a great meal and good fellowship. It's interesting how universal childhoods can be. 3/26/10 - Gray early this am, then another beautiful Bahaman day. We went to town for groceries, then back to the boat for lunch. Our dinghy engine was acting up, would not run at high speed. We limped into down and back with Miles escorting us. After lunch I took Ruth to the beach and serviced the engine. Found no reason for it to be acting up. Drained and trained the fueled the engine, checked the plugs... no reason for it to act up. It appeared to be happy as we returned to the boat but it was too rough to open up the throttle and find out if the engine was running right. We moved up to Volleyball Beach with Ariel and Alaeris. While they went to dinner at a restaurant on the island we had another movie night, Ruth did popcorn and we watched another Ruthie pick - a great one, "Rendition". 3/27/10 - Rain early, around 5am. Miles came over mid-morning to see if we wanted to go to town for the farmer's market. Ruth declined as she wasn't feeling well. We hung out on the boat most of the day. I took a short dinghy ride to check out the engine. I think we have a partially plugged high speed jet as the engine will run on high speed only with the choke pulled half way out. The jets are sealed in these new engines so I don't know how to clear it. I'm trying a bottle of tune-up. Ruth beat me in cards tonight 2:1. Bad lapse on my part while listening to a great bar band's music cost me one game. 3/28/10 - It's dawn, another sunny day with normal trade winds from the east. Mr. Power Hog is up on the computer while the coffee pot churns along (there goes 18 amp-hours of battery juice). We have internet today for a change so we published our blog and picked up 81 e-mails, about 25% the IRS scam. Guess I'll have to write a filter for that one. Frat brother Bill Rohde (Jubilee) dropped by for a visit. It's interesting how many of our fraternity ended up with sailboats. At Stout I was the only one sailing, albeit in a canoe. 3/29/10 - Dawn broke with 15 knot winds and sun. We (all 3 boats) hoisted anchor around 9am, moving across the roads to Georgetown, Kidd Cove, to avoid a long dinghy ride in choppy water. Additionally another cold front would be passing through tonight and this was the better side of the road to be on - less fetch for waves to build. It was a domestic day... wash, some provisioning, lunch ashore and hauling garbage. Miles, Laureen, Alex, Irise, Ruth and I had a pleasant day ashore lunching, doing the wash and touring town. Ruth prepared the boat for guests; we'd invited the crew to dinner. As it was a warm humid day she showered in the cockpit when she was done (no photos permitted). We had a great meal and wonderful companionship as the crew of Ariel and Alaeris joined us for dinner. 3/30/10 - Woke to 18 - 20 knot winds and waves, the cold front passed through late last night. We moved back to the east side of the road to gain shelter from the waves created by the new wind direction. Bahamas weather guru Chris Parker says this is the last major cold front of the season... we all have our fingers crossed. This sure has been the year of the cold front. One reason we moved was to get to a WiFi hotspot; unfortunately it went down just as we were logging on. It took most of the day to get back on the hotspot. Apparently when we lost the signal our computer decided it wanted nothing further to do with the site and would not register it. We had to reboot the computer and restart WZC from wireless services before the link reappeared and we could log on... mission accomplished, taxes paid. 3/31/10 - Beautiful day today. After the cruisers net we hoisted anchor and motored across the road to Georgetown to drop off garbage and pick up some provisions. Ruth had placed an order with the basket weavers for two customized baskets for wall hanging storage; she picked them up today... they look great! We motored back to Gaviota Bay for a WiFi connection. I finished a small article and submitted it via e-mail. WiFi connections here are a mystery... sometimes they work according to protocol and sometime they just work - or don't. Several attempts to publish this afternoon didn't work though we were able to do e-mails. We joined the Nauti Nauti crew (Alan, Pat and their guests) on Ariel for sundowners and snacks. Nauti Nauti is heading to Trinidad to get south of the hurricane belt this year. I could see Ruth torn between that and heading north. She's wanting to visit new places.
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After a week in Highborne Ariel joined us in Warderick Wells, the Exumas Park.
Laureen in the cliffs above the Exumas Sound, photo by Ruth
Ariel and AA leave their mark on Boo Boo hill - and appeal to the gods of the sea, wind and weather.
Trail sign at a park stop
Another trail sign in the park. Barry did the number hands for a kids learning experience trail
The fire is lit, it's Saturday Night - time to party
Part of the party crowd
Our friends from the Netherlands, Sergej and family - they sailed here from Europe in a Jeanneau DS43 - the same hull as Another Adventure.
Folks from New jersey, Washington, Netherlands, France, Canada, Canada (French), England, Germany, and...
Party's over, embers glow in colors from the sea salts in the driftwood
At Warderick Wells we were visited by Angells. Relatives Patti?
Ruth's ready for our dinner guests.
Irise and Alex arrive by dinghy for dinner. Kids don't try dinghy standing at home - these are professionals. |
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View our prior 2010 Logs
| Boca Raton, 1/1 to 1/15/10 | Key West, 1/16 to 1/31/10 |
| Miami, 2/1 to 2/15/10 | Miami, 2/16 to 2/28/10 |
| Boca to Exumas, 3/1 to 3/15 | |
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