Sandbars

They are irritating. We always have to be on a constant lookout
whenever we are going somewhere. When we were getting into this place,
the sand bar and reef were both basically invisible. We kept having to
slow down, and speed up, and loop around, and stop, and mearrgh! At
least we have the help of polarized sunglasses and charts. Without
them, it would be impossible.

--By Rigel

Atop Boo Boo Hill

Warderick Wells Cay, trying to get a cell signal from Staniel Cay. Two bars, fading to one, then none.
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Trying to catch dinner

At Fowl Cay. Chicken Cay, on some charts.

We don't care, so long as it's Grouper Cay, for us.
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Another cloudy day

Which means that navigating around sandbars and reefs can be hazardous, which means we're not moving, which means, time to go exploring ashore.

That pink church, by the way, is the landmark on Staniel Cay with which one lines up the vertical stick at the tip of the islet at the south end of the harbor in order to gain the entrance channel and avoid going aground on the rocks and sinking.
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Thunderball Grotto

If you have seen the movie Thunderball, then you know of the scene of James Bond being dropped by helicopter into a cave. That cave is now called Thunderball grotto, and we've been there. Twice now, actually. It is only accessible by water, and perhaps, air, but it is quite fascinating underwater. There are tons of fish, including sergeant majors, grouper, and snapper. The thing is, they are very brave, and a little aggressive. They are used to humans feeding them breadcrumbs. There are three entrances into the cave. One is always above water at low tide, and involves no diving at low tide. At high tide, it is still possible to get in, but kind of hard. Thunderball grotto is not a place to miss.

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GPS location Date/Time:05/22/2011 16:29:03 GMT

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Imagine all this chain

Twisted up into a massive, 150-pound ball. Imagine trying to get it out through a three-inch hole.

For the gory details, see Orion's entry today.
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The Monster in the Anchor Locker

The Monster in the Anchor Locker

The Monster to whom I refer is, or rather was, the giant ball of twisted chain that took up almost seventy feet of chain that we could not use. This morning Dad and I launched a determined assault on the dreaded ball of chain. First step: pull all the chain out on deck. More difficult then it sounds, because to do that you have to pull the chain up through the hawse pipe. The hawse pipe is the tube that leads from the chain locker up to the windlass on deck, and if the chain is twisted, it will jam in the pipe. The only other way is to empty the fore cabin, where Dad sleeps by the way, remove all the mattresses, and pull the chain onto the boards beneath the bunk. This is rather extreme, and would require the whole day to do properly, so we proceeded with the original plan. Dad untwisted the chain in the anchor locker and I was on deck, pulling the chain out. It took us about two hours to get it all out, and as dad untwisted the chain, the twists moved down the chain and added to the dreaded ball. To properly untwist the ball required lifting it up, and the thing weighed more than thirty pounds, and in the anchor locker, you get very little leverage. Then, we had to completely untwist the chain on deck, not an easy task, we had to untwist almost ninety feet of heavy chain. Feeding it back in was easier, but the whole task took more than three hours, but it was a big task that is now out of the way, and hopefully we won't have to do it again.
--Orion Date
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GPS location Date/Time:05/19/2011 16:22:09 GMT

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The flood tide

Doing its crazy, swirling, twice daily, anchor-yanking insanity here at Little Farmer's Cay.
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Orion's snapper dinner

That which he caught, right off the boat.
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Little Harbour

LFC.
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Downtown, Little Farmer's Cay

Pop. 70.
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Getting in was easy

Getting around inside . . . well, that's another matter. Sandbars and coral ridges all over the place. As this big sport fisherman found out this morning. Next high tide: 2030 this evening.
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Stale Golden Grahams and a Spreadsheet

That is what we used to determine the freakish speed of the current here. It was purely out of curiosity, but it was fun to find out. First, we made some calculations. Then, we started to test. We used the stopwatch on my wrist watch to measure the amount of time it took for the stale golden graham to get from bow to stern. As it is hard to determine exactly when the golden graham passed the stern, and it is impossible to make it land directly at the bow, we did several tests and determined the average amount of time it took. We used the spreadsheet program to find the average, and then used our calculations in the spreadsheet to find the speed of the current (it was about 1.2 knots).

--By Rigel

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GPS location Date/Time:05/15/2011 18:59:11 GMT

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Piloting

Piloting

In marine language, piloting basically means navigating by landmarks rather than latitude and longitude. To get in and out of Elizabeth Harbor, that is just about what you have to do. When we left this morning, getting out into the open water involved following the coast of Stocking Island until a stone tower on Stocking Island and several pink houses with white roofs on Great Exuma were in a line, then following that line until the bearing on the radio towers in George Town was about 180°, then turning to a course of 308° until the we had a bearing of 173° on the houses, then keeping the stern on the houses until we had a bearing of about 130° on the tower on Stocking Island, then keeping the tower on our stern until the houses were at 165°, then keeping them on our stern until we were clear of all the reefs. Kind of complicated, right? According to Dad, we'll be doing that a lot in the Bahamas.
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Look what we caught!

So some fish comes along and nibbles and nibbles and then chomps down hard, biting our €9 lure from Marigot, St. Martin, using the last of our Euro notes, clean in half -- and then spits it out and swims off!

Of course, a fish with teeth that sharp . . . do we really want him thrashing around in the cockpit?

And then to cap it off (and before we realized the state of our feathery pink "squid"), we catch -- a clump of sargassum! Yeah!
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One last run to Exuma Markets

No idea where the next fresh milk, veggie stop might be.
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The micro dinghy

On our boat, we have three dinghies. One is the main RIB, another is the fully inflatable one under the cushions of the fore cabin, and the third is the micro dinghy. It is fully inflatable, and Orion and I occasionally inflate it, and row to the beach, or something like that. We have been doing just that lately, but the wind is now up so we can't. It has only oars, is very light, and can beat the RIB in a rowing race with no wind or waves.
--By Rigel
¤¤¤
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George Town

Well, we are finally in George Town, the place where we can get the things that we can't get in the rest of the Bahamas. Most of the things anyway. Elizabeth Harbor, at the island of Great Exuma, is also a really great place to swim, as it is protected from just about any direction. Anyway, it is really nice to finally be here, but we now only have about six weeks left.
--Orion Date
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Bringing the dinghy around

To collect Dad from the Shell station dock on "Lake" Victoria, George Town.
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At anchor off George Town, Great Exuma

Pondering the clouds shaded green at the bottom -- reflecting the shallow water on the bank?
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GPS location Date/Time:05/06/2011 18:55:46 GMT

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There! Leak into THAT!

For the second time in a year, our sea water cooling pump on the engine began leaking. And while we appreciate the drain holes that prevent sea water from getting into the crankcase, we're not so crazy about the drip-drip-drip onto wiring bundles and the transmission case -- which after a prolonged period of motoring adds a not-so-nice cake of salt onto those and other engine parts.

Hence our attempt to divert the NEXT leak directly into the bilge. We almost hope the newly replaced pump leaks, just to see if our contraption works. ALMOST hope.

The water pump was one of two must-fix items before leaving here. The other was the ripped seam in our mainsail. After eights hours of hand stitching, that's done, too.

So, it's off to Conception Island tomorrow, first light.

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Silence at last... Almost.

Place after place we've been to, we have been surrounded by other boats, often charter boats. Now, at San Salvador, there are no other boats in the anchorage. So silence at last... Almost. There is a big, loud generator on shore that runs all the time. And there is the constant whir of the windmills as well. But at least it is better than constant noise...

--By Rigel
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