Repairing a Boom and Floating a Boat.

We are happy that we waited and came into this marina. They do have incredible hot water and the cost to stay here until Thursday is less than one night at Chub Cay. We not only have internet but we have "shore power". We have not been hooked up to shore power since October at Harbortown Marina in Fort Pierce.
We were also able to get a bolt to repair the boom and get that taken care of today. There is another boat here that has been here 2 months. Tea Leaves has an 8 ft draft and the entrance just isn't 8 ft deep. I was told that they put flotation bags under the keel and pulled it over as if healed pretty far over to bring it in through the channel. I don't understand the whole story behind them coming in but I did meet the two nice young guys who are on the boat today when they were preparing to tow them out. They were hoping to get out at high tide this afternoon but the numbers weren't working. 5:30 in the morning is the next high tide and it is suppose to run another half a foot higher and will hopefully work out. They had guys putting flotation bags under it today to raise it as high as possible. If we had been up this way just a couple of days earlier we could have crossed back to the states and headed home yesterday.Right now it is looking like we are going to be enjoying Sunrise Marina for at least the next 5 days. We will then see if we can get a good window to tackle the gulf stream again.

new bolt installed, repair complete

The boom is a little worse for wear

The work crew preparing Tea Leaves to hopefully leave the Marina

Divers in the water placing flotation under the hull

The large building on the left is a boat yard. It being so close is
one main reason we hung around so long to get in here.

We pulled over to the fuel dock after waiting for a power boat to finish fueling around 10 am. We had paid our marina and lunch bill around $140 and were ready to head out.  The power boat took around 1000 gallons of fuel. Now our bill for 40 gallons of fuel was $272.00 can you imagine the bill for 1,000 gallons. I would need an ambulance! Oh well, it’s only money, gulp.

We left Chub Cay headed to the North West Channel marker. I was really interested in seeing this as if you recall we went through it at midnight with all the chart books warning that you should not go through it at night unless very experienced. I had envisioned a small passageway lined with rocks and cliffs a lot like the Little Farmers

my minds eye of Northwest channel marker and add a pole in the middle

This was the reality. Silly me, The darkness makes scary, scarier 

 What I saw was open water that was shallow ( but nothing compared to what we had been navigating through in the Exumas)  with a rocky bottom and numerous patches of grass.  We saw 4 boats besides us going through the passage and each one to a slightly different route and no one had any problem. Take that North West Passage! The monster when exposed to the light disappeared!
  Onward into light winds on our nose and flat seas we motored to begin our overnight trip to West End on Grand Bahama Island. The day was beautiful and we enjoyed the sun, light winds and smooth seas. AND THEN : The winds shifted and climbed but not to bad. The seas became a little lumpy and their direction confused. Freddie had tried to take a nap,so that he would take the first watch but got up early and I went inside to fix some supper before dark . I heard something strange and the motors slow down. I stick my head out the door and ask Freddie if everything was alright. His answer was NO! The boom has just came loose from the  mast! Oh Great! We start to work and access the situation. It is just about 5 pm and sunset is is less than one hour. We furl in the jib and climb up and begin to work. Let me tell you that that thing is HEAVY. We finally figured out how we could secure the boom for the night but now we are for sure a motor boat until we get this taken care of. Of course the wind and waves decided to make certain that we had a lumpy night. Poor Freddie couldn't sleep ( I think it was from all the adrenaline rush) so he elected to stay at the helm until 4 am. I would sleep and then wake up and check on him every hour. Bless his heart because not 30 minutes after he turned the helm over to me I have a cruise ship looking like it is on a collision course with me so I wake him to ask for his advice. The ship passed to our stern  but was close enough for us to see it very clearly . Even Freddie, who was none to happy about me getting him up, did say that it passed closer than any other ship had while he was on watch. He went back to bed and I handled things from there. As soon as the sun came up I began looking for the closest port to land. Since the seas had been so lumpy and there was a great deal of counter current ( current running in the opposite direction the we are going) we only averaged around 2.8 knts. That is really slow and barely enough to keep the auto pilot working ( which did a wonderful job without any problems). We headed to Freeport looking for a safe harbor and a marine store to get a replacement bolt set up for the boom connection. Of course it also needed to be at a price we could afford. I picked Sunrise Marina which was very reasonable and has floating docks, a Marine service center right next to it. Unfortunately the channel going into the marina is VERY shallow and they only let people in at high tide. OK high tide is at 4pm and we need to wait 45 minutes after that.. We arrived at 9 am and have been hanging out waiting to get in. They better have really great hot showers cause we are both beat. We will see.

We did finally figure out a secure way to tie off the dingy on the davits.
We had been having to bring it up and secure it on it's side blocking
the entire back end of the boat.

This is the boom disconnected from the mast. That hole on the
square thing is where the bolt went through and it was attached
around where you see the big loop of sail.

Back in place with a bolt that is to short through the top and
lashed for the bottom and around the mast. We also lashed the
back of the sail so that it would not move in case the winds got
worse.

Hanging around the entrance to Sunrise Marina in Freeport on Grand
Bahama Island.

Black Point, the return trip.

We pulled anchor and headed to Black Point to be able to go in and connect to internet.  It took all of 30 minutes. Yep we had not noticed that we were just around the corner from Black Point the night before. Oh well we live and learn. The charts are several sizes and difficult for us newbie’s to figure actual distances. We were surprised to see how full the anchorage was. I counted at least 36 boats when we anchored and Freddie was able to count over 50 when he counted that afternoon. We just had a boat come right by to drop anchor as I looked up from typing this.  Several boats left this morning headed south and even more have arrived today. Black Point is hosting a big Super Bowl Party Sunday and many cruisers have been making their reservations. We are trying to determine the course we want to take home. That is my big plans for today after I go back into town to take in our garbage and upload the blog. Yesterday I had to go online to straighten out my credit cards. They thought that there was fraudulent activity since the purchases were from the Bahamas and had put them on hold until we verified the purchases. That wasn't so easy to do without internet and the phone numbers that were on the email did not work from the Bahamas. Oh well they just announced fresh caught lobsters at the dock. Since we haven’t had any luck catching our own I think we will check into buying a couple. We may stick around a couple of days.

Black Point anchorage

Ok I forgot to publish this post a while back. He He He.. I'm so silly.

Auto Pilots are PRECIOUS comodities

Auto Pilots are very precious. We left West Bay around 7:30 am and headed to Chubb at almost low tide. The entry and exit is not a problem for a boat with our draft but I still held my breath in a couple of places.  If we were in a full keeled boat we would have had to time our exit differently. There is a little more wind today and this area has a bit more wave motion than the shallow banks that we covered the past few days but not bad really. We unfurled the jib and were making good time.  Not more than an hour out our auto pilot quit. Yep, it has had low battery readings periodically but would come back quickly. This time, we weren't so fortunate. Hand steering a compass heading with the sea swells, current and wind gusts is tedious, tiring work. I go through all of our paperwork on the new auto pilot and find that when the display gives the low battery reading that it is not receiving sufficient power. Well Duh! Remedy press stand by to clear the warning and start the engines to re charge the battery. We already had the engines running so we kept checking as much of the wiring connections as we could get to while taking turns at the helm. Finally auto started to work again for the last part of our trip. We had secured a berth at Chub Cay Club marina and ate fish and fries in the club house. We were pretty tired for a relatively short trip. We took our first land showers this year. I also gave myself a quick hair- cut. I can cut Fred’s on the boat but I don’t have a mirror for outside and don’t want hair all over the front bedroom where the mirror is located. We are going to get diesel and check weather then head out for our first overnight-er this trip to be positioned at West End to cross for home as soon as we get a weather window.

Chub Cay Club

Entrance to Chub Marina

Building renovations, Beautiful place but has fallen into disrepair.
The new owner comes on board next month and is doing a lot
of renovations. The docks were the best we have seen since the States.

The infinity pool with swim up bar.

No Wind For Us

We picked our way through the coral heads and left Normans Cay about 7:30 am since we knew that we had a longer trip to New Providence and wanted to get there in plenty of daylight.  We elected to again go to the western side of the island as we did on the trip down. As forecasted there was almost no wind. I think we averaged around 2 knots so motoring we go. It is interesting how different things are on the return trip. There are boats everywhere. A lot more traffic than when we came down in November. Now it’s not what you would call rush hour traffic on the roads or anything but it is different. We may have seen on boat on a leg of our journey down in November but are likely to see 20 now.  Our little anchorage in West Bay that we had all to ourselves in November had more than 10 boats last night. The trip was pretty uneventful. We did see dolphins a couple of times but they didn't hang around long enough for me to get but a couple of pictures of them. Freddie kept ready to unfurl the jib and get some help for the motors but finally just gave up.  I worked on my basket weaving; I will post a pic when it starts to look like a basket. I cleaned a lot of the yuck off of the conch shell that I picked up at Normans.  I also read some of my book that my Aunt Jo gave me for Christmas. I am about 2/3 of the way through with it. It is the story of James Baldwin and his sail around the world alone on his sail boat Atom. Thanks Aunt Jo.  We did get settled in time to take the dingy and explore the Park that is on the western tip of this bay. We talked to a group doing an afternoon scuba dive with an instructor that is also professional a kick boxer.  Their Bahamian taxi driver asked us if we knew what beach this was and we said “no”. She then told us that this is Jaws beach, where they filmed Jaws. Glad I found that out after Freddie had dove the anchor! We have enjoyed the best internet that we have had since we left the states here. Freddie finally got the Bullet working and we have taken advantage of it checking weather, anchorages and updating the blog with pictures that don’t take 30 minutes each. Heading to Chub this morning and hang out through the cold front.

Finally got a picture of a dolphin escort

Jaws Beach. Da Dum..Da Dum........

Not even enough wind to stir our Courtesy flag!

Scuba divers getting ready to brave the Jaws Beach water.

Spinnaker Sailing, Drug Lords and Airplanes

We said Good bye to Warderick Wells around 9:30 Thursday Morning and headed to Normans Cay. The winds light and the seas calm as we headed North. After motor sailing with the jib the winds were still very light and Freddie suggested that we try our spinnaker sail. After our disastrous experience leaving Black Point and considering that the only time we had ever had the spinnaker out before we had tried to hoist it sideways, I was a little skeptical about giving it a go. Freddie reminded me that we will never learn anything if we don’t try it so I dug out the spinnaker. We not only got it flying but did so without any calamities or cross words. Score another one for Fred! For those of you that don’t know a Spinnaker sail is a very lightweight light wind sail. It is made out of what feels like parachute material and fills out with wind high and in front of the boat like a half of a giant balloon. Sailing with the Spinnaker went well and taking it down was a little more tedious but no real disasters or screaming.

We were anchored off of Normans Cay at 2:30 and were in the dingy headed to explore before 3 pm. Normans Cay rose to fame as Carlos Leder’s base during the bad days of Bahamian Drug trading. There are still some bullet ridden houses and crumbling remains of his territory just north of the airstrip. There is also a ditched aircraft in the southern anchorage that we had a great time snorkeling in. We came across the airstrip while exploring the island and had not understood it was still an operational airstrip until we saw a plane landing directly in front of us while we were standing on the air strip. We then noticed the hanger at the far south end of the strip where the plane let off its passengers and took back off. We were long gone back to the beach before we saw it leave not wanting to be plane food. We had a nice chat with some people that have lived on their boat for 4 years and are looking at coming and checking out real-estate in the St. Marys and Fernandina area this summer. Small world.  Leaving early in the morning for Nassau around a 40 mile trip,a full day when you only do around 5 knts. 

Yes we are flying that spinnaker!

We are getting pretty good at these selfee's  on Normans after
snorkeling the sunken plane and before dodging the flying one.

not a bad pic with a $10 Walmart camera.

Very spooky. All the coral around the seats and such looked
like skeletons.

I wonder if the fish ate the drugs?

Ah Freddie we need to get out of here.

On the Move towards Home

Freddie with my life in his hands. Good thing we had went to feed the pigs and I had fed him supper!

After going into town to connect to internet, top off time on our cell phones and the check the weather forecast we took off to Big Major beside Staniel Cay. Yes pig island again. Trying to sail there was a mess. The wind was only supposed to be blowing 15 but it sure felt like more to me as we wrestled with both the both sails. Lesson learned ALWAYS secure the wind generator when working with the main sail. One of our mainsail reef lines broke a blade on our generator putting it out of commission for the rest of our trip. We continued to have issues with both the main and jib, so much so that we put them away and just motored on to Big Major arriving around 3 pm. Some sailors we are! Neither one of us were in great moods, in fact we were both pretty snippy. The pigs make us happy though, so after setting the anchor we loaded up our moldy bread and took off to feed our favorite swine.  Our Bahamian courtesy flag line had chafed  through while we were at Black Point and needed to be fixed. With plenty of daylight left and since the wind had died  I talked Freddie into hauling me up the mast (I much preferred that to me hauling him up there) to restring it. We had a great dinner of left over steak with butter beans and rice and hit the sack. The next morning we took off to Warderick Wells. This time we just motor sailed with the jib and had a great trip. We picked up a mooring again at the Land and Sea Park where we had stayed on our trip down.  After paying for a night we hiked back up to Boo Boo Hill and found our sign we had left in November. They have a nice new memorial bench up there now and we visited with several other cruisers during our hike. We are making short day hops up the chain to be in a position to cross back over and head home. Right now it doesn't look like we can cross for at least another week. Every stop we make we have to make sure we have a secure anchorage close in case of a nasty cold front. Who knows with forecasts that far out. One thing for sure the weather is always changing.

Selfie from the mast behind Big Major

Only two pics. The worst thing about the Land and Sea Park is internet and no phone service. Otherwise, a wonderful place.