January 1, 2000 -- Open Today, But Not Tomorrow or Monday Today, we found out that people often celebrate a holiday on the Monday after the day in question, when it falls on a Saturday. Of course, today is Saturday, January 1, so we headed back to Lucya Market Place to check out the shops. While not everything was open, there was certainly plenty to look through. We found everything we were looking for. We wandered the Market Place, found stamps to mail post cards, as well as new post cards to write. We also wandered the various T-shirt shops and other nick nack (junk) shops. Finally we headed to a local conch stand at the beach. Mike and I decided the line was to long for us to wait in so we people watched while Richard and Vicky waited to get some conch. Unfortunately they were out, so they settled for hamburgers instead. We wandered through the hotel resort on our way back to the boats and were treated to an amazing pool area and a nicely decorated entrance foyer. I have one question though, if you are in the Bahamas with crystal clear warm water, why would you want to swim in a pool? The Junkanoo started at 5:00 PM EST. We decided that we would head over around 4:30 PM just in case it actually started on time, even though we were told that it would start at 5:00 PM Bahamian time. Which means that maybe kinda sorta it just might start on time if it's the rainy season on Mars and the flys are not biting. After we arrived, we picked out our spot and waited while Mike and Anne went wandering through the food tents to see what was for dinner. They came back and reported their findings to us. I couldn't decide what I wanted so Anne, Richard and I went to the food tents to purchase food for everyone. Anne and I decided on steamed lobster, and then picked the absolutely slowest line in the world to purchase from. Knowing that I would have some time, I left Anne while I went in search of food for Michael. I found and purchased things from 4 different booths before the lobsters were ready. I still had to wait almost 15 minutes after doing all that! But the wait was worth it, the lobster was excellent. We watched the Junkanoo parade until we saw floats repeating themselves. At that point, Mike and I decided to return to the boat for some peace and quiet, and to let our ears stop ringing! About half an hour later, Anne, Henri, Richard and Vicky returned. We stayed up late drinking cocktails and talking about our impressions of what we had seen. The Junkanoo parade was an experience that I am glad I had. However, like Times Square on New Years, it is not one I want to experience again, mostly due to the crush of rude tourists.
January 2-4, 2000 -- A Little R&R On January 2, knowing that just about everything in the Bahamas is closed on Sundays, we did a little bit of maintenance, then headed to the pool for the afternoon. I know, what I said earlier; however, Lucya Village Marina is located on the other side of the lagoon, so it was just easier to head to the pool. It actually worked out well since we met several really nice people there and talked about various options for getting back to the U.S. On January 3, we were planning to head to Great Harbor. Unfortuantely, the weather did not cooperate, so we headed to the Lucya Market Place for lunch. While we were there, we saw that the Harley Davidson place was open, so I purchased T-shirts from there. Then we had lunch and spent a quiet rest of the day on the boat. On January 4, we went to the International Bazaar. We wandered around and did a lot of looking, but nothing sparked our interest. We had lunch at the Chicken Shack and Garden bar which turned out to be quite good. After that, we headed back to the boat with the international edition of the USA Today to catch up on world affairs
January 5, 2000 -- Back to West End After considering our options, and reviewing the charts, we decided that the wisest move for us would be to return to West End instead of continuing on with Henri and Anne to Great Harbor. This way when our weather window came, we would be ready to scoot across to West Palm Beach. We left out of Port Lucya at just about high tide at 1130 GMT. We never had less than 1 foot of water under the keel. Shortly after we cleared the jetties, we heard Sharon Ann hailing Sea Flat. After they were done chatting, we called the Sharon Ann. It was the same Sharon Ann that we had gone around Hatteras with! They were only 2 slips down from us and neither of us ever realized it, though we did make introductions. They are also headed south to Trinidad, so we are sure to meet up with them. At 1520 GMT, we passed a frontal boundary and the winds went from a sedate 4 knots to a roaring 15 knots. After looking at everything, we decided to try this tacking thing and put the sails out. We sailed for just over two hours, the winds started to climb and we decided that we needed to beat feet to get in before the winds climbed any higher. We dropped sails and moved quickly to West End under power. At 1813 GMT, we were safely tied up at the Old Bahama Bay marina, facing the direction that we wanted to (ready to go out), though this was not intentional!
Today was a pretty light day. We started out in the morning by meeting Paul from S/V Kiana. He came over because he noticed that we had an SSB antenna and wanted to know if we could help him figure his radio out. Since we were planning to do a few things around the boat we suggested that we come over after lunch. We had a relatively simple plan, we wanted to get another coat of Armada on our rails. We pulled out the necessary stuff, and proceeded to prep the boat. Mike scuffed the teak while I started taping. Mike completed his work before I was done, so he started putting armada on areas that did not require tape. After I was done, I started helping and we completed the new coat in relatively short order. After a quick shower, we headed over to Kiana where we met Lynn. I worked with Paul on how to program frequencies on his SSB, then we went over weather faxes. Everything seemed to go pretty well, and in pretty short order, Paul was pulling weather faxes. We spent some time chatting with them about their boat and then invited them over for cocktails. We headed back to the boat and sprawled for the afternoon. Paul and Lynn came over around 6:30 PM and we spent the evening talking about our experiences cruising and comparing notes on our opinion of the Bahamas. On January 7, we decided to borrow the marina bikes and ride into town. I was amazed at the number of conch shells lying on the side of the road at various places. The water was crystal blue and beautiful. The buildings, on the other hand, were not quite as nice. Some looked like they had been there for eons, with no upkeep performed on them. We saw a number of cement docks that had fallen into disrepair, as well as a couple of fuel docks that didn't look sound at all. When we arrived back at the boat, we settled down for a little rest. Well, we actually completely sacked out for a number of hours! I woke up and wandered over to Kiana to say hey and find out how things were going. Paul and Lynn had also gone into town, only they met a couple there and invited them back to the boat. Lynn invited me aboard and we spent the rest of the afternoon getting to know a dentist and his wife from Colorado. They were intrigued with the cruising lifestyle. In fact, it was almost as if their eyes were opened! They said that when they went back home, they now had a new goal to work towards, they knew where they wanted to go! It was a great afternoon. On January 8, we considered heading back to the US However, there was a bit of north in the wind, so we decided to hold off for one more day. Since a wind blowing from the North with the Gulf Stream coming from the South can make for a unpleasent ride. We watched a couple of power boats pull in to the marina to check in so we wandered over to meet them. I ran into Lynn who asked if I could stop by later because Paul was still having problems getting weather faxes, and he was also having problems tuning the radio. I told her that I would come over right before the next set of faxes was due. On one of the boats was a family of 5, parents and 3 older kids. They were planning to cruise the Abacos for several months. When the father went to check the family in, we bid them good bye and returned to the boat. Later, I headed over to Paul and Lynn's. We went over the procedures on how to tune the radio, then discovered that Paul's small inverter was putting out to much RF noise in its current location, right above the radio. Once we powered the small inverter down, we found that the signal cleared up immediately! Faxes started rolling in and looked almost printer quality. I came back to the boat and spent the rest of the afternoon puttering around, and reviewing weather faxes as they came in. We cleaned up the boat and made sure that it was ocean ready then spent a quiet afternoon reading books
At 1130 GMT, we left West End for West Palm Beach. Paul came over to see us off and helped with lines. Considering that it was O' Dark-thirty, it was very kind of him! As we pulled out, Lynn poked her head out and waved good bye to us as well. They are a great couple, and I hope we run into them again. At 1208 GMT, we spotted two funnel clouds well off to our starboard side. They didn't come very far down, but they were well defined. We decided to head upwind of them, just in case. At 1350 GMT, we spotted another funnel cloud off our port aft quarter. After that, there were no other weather anomalies. Around 1400, we put our sails out and our speed went from 8.1 knots to 9.0+ knots, now and then making over 10 knots. We weren't quite sailing, but were motor sailing. We cruised along at that speed until we got about 45 minutes out of West Palm Beach. The trip itself was beautiful. We were both able to go inside without fear of getting sea sick, I even cooked breakfast! We flipped on the water maker and then enjoyed the cruise back in nearly flat seas, good winds and a great sail. We dropped sails just outside of the sea buoy at West Palm Beach, and motored the rest of the way in. We dropped the hook at 1840 GMT. First on the list, we called Yvonne to let her know that we had made it back. Then we called Customs. They were very nice, especially since we had not received our Customs decal yet. We quickly cleared in and received our clearance number which we promptly entered in our log book. We fixed cheese and crackers, then sat outside while we each called our parents to let them know that we had arrived back, and to wish them a Happy New Year. We pulled e-mail and set about answering letters
We will never go to Ft. Lauderdale again, at least if we can avoid it. It's like being downtown at rush hour and then tring to find a place to park. It's just not enjoyable and a lot of trouble and we really hate to be at a marina. After all you see one set of poles to tie up to and they are all the same, it's much more enjoyable to be at Anchor. The trip was somewhat unpleasant, considering that we were dealing with 15-20 knot head winds the entire time. We also decided that we would never beat into it again, if we could avoid it. When we left out of West Palm things were relatively calm. As we progressed down the coast, the waves never got very high, but the wave length was extremely short. We tried putting the sails out and short tacking, but that was shot when I was moving the stay sail from our small winch to the large one. We lost our stabilization, and the boat was rocked back and forth this was uncomfortable and we wanted to make it in early, so Mike said the hell with it, we where just going to moter in and save the time tacking back and forth would take. We arrived at the inlet for Ft Lauderdale praying that we would find someplace to anchor or tie up so we wouldn't have to go through the 17th St. Causeway bridge. Unfortunately, the one place available could only support a 6 foot draft, so we waited in line for the bridge to open. Going through bridges is a traumatic experience. I have extremely high regard for anyone who runs the intracoastal for that reason. Of course, we made it through with no problem. We motored to the Las Olas bridge where we found no anchor room, so we decided to stay at the Bahia Mar marina. After being sent from one end of the marina to the other, we finally settled in to a bulkhead slip for the night. We hooked our power, cable and phone up, sent e-mail letting everyone know we were in Ft. Lauderdale, and then went in search of food. We had not eaten since last night. We finally stopped at a little Italian place that looked like it had incredible pizza. Of course, we had steak and spaghetti. Neither was very good. We returned to the boat, uploaded the voyages section of the web site, then turned in for the evening.
This morning, Jay from Mindeymoya came over to visit for a little while. We hadn't seen him since he and his brother left Deltaville in early October! We spent some time chatting with him about how his cruise had been, how his brother was doing, and discussing the attitudes we have encountered as we moved south. Around 1430 GMT, we set out to make the run to Miami Beach. We wanted to time leaving from the dock so that we would not have to wait for the 17th St. Causeway bridge open. We arrived there with about 3 minutes to spare. We noted that the new bridge was only partially open, so we radioed the bridge to find out what was going on. They informed us that only one side of the bridge would be opening. I would have to thread us through the bridge with only half the width that I had the night before! That left us with maybe 3 feet on either side of the boat! We lined ourselves up, and while I piloted the boat, Mike went from side to side to make sure that the rigging would clear the bridge. I was ready at any time to drop the boat in reverse and punch the throttles! We made it through just fine. Well, we made it through almost just fine, I think I left part of my nerves at the bridge! As we cleared the bridge, an ocean liner was also leaving the commercial dock. We slowed down and let them go first, considering the laws of gross tonnage and all that. As we cleared the jetty, we were amazed at what a difference 24 hours makes. The seas were completely flat with less than 10 knots of wind the entire way to Government Cut. On the way though, we experienced something completely bizarre! We were moving along and found that we would veer off to starboard while the computer/GPS/autopilot thought that we were off course to port! This happened with two different GPSes, and two different computers. Somehow, though the image displayed on the computer was absolutely correct, the cross track error reporting was wrong. Ultimately, we settled to steer by compass. We wondered if it had something to do with the Cuban kid. I guess we will never know. At 1815, we tied up at the Miami Beach Marina. It was a beautiful, uneventful trip, vastly different from yesterday's!
Bright and early Wednesday morning, Ron from Merrill-Stevens stopped by to review the list of deficiencies that needed to be fixed. He brought two people with him, an electrician and a mechanical lead. We spent about an hour to review the list when the plumber showed up. We reviewed the plumbing with him and after some discussion, came to the conclusion that the correct decisions were made with regard to the plumbing. Everyone got to work quickly. We decided that it would be better for us to make sure that we were available to the workers, in case there were any problems. This proved to be a good idea, since periodically, we were needed! Mostly this had to do with how our electrical system is set up, or to show where various vents were, but it certainly sped the work being done. On Thursday, January 13, our Gen-Air grill was removed because the fan did not draw well. Merrill-Stevens expected that they would have to improve the fan that was on there. They took the grill with them at lunch. It was back by mid afternoon. As it turns out, the grill's fan was wired incorrectly from the factory, and the fan blade was also put on backwards. With these two deficiencies corrected, the fan proved to draw efficiently. The work elsewhere was going well on the boat. The nicest thing was that if we were not available, the leads on the job caught problems before they started. On Friday, January 14, Ron came out to see how the job was progressing. He also brought a Rigger with him so we could discuss the problem that was occurring with our spreader lights and furling gear. After discussing the two issues with him, he went with Otto, the electrician, to look at the base of the mast. Our gen-air grill was hooked back up for the weekend, with its own, new, 220 volt plug (it was hard wired previously). However, we decided not to use it for the weekend since there was no exhaust duct. At the end of the work day, the boat was partially reassembled so that we could live on it for the weekend relatively comfortably
On January 15, we spent the day taking it easy. Winds were still blowing pretty strong at 20+ knots of wind so we took a walk to see what the ocean looked like. After a 20 minute walk, we approached the beach. As soon as we cleared the first dune, we were assaulted with wind blown sand. The seas weren't quite as rough as we expected, but they were high enough that we were glad we weren't out in them or heading out in them! We returned to the boat and spent the rest of the day reading, playing games and napping. We decided to go out Saturday night. We headed out around 10:30 PM EST and caught a cab pretty quickly. We arrived at the bar and were greeted to a sight of an exceptionally small number of people there. To make matters worse, we also discovered that the bar did not serve liquor, just beer. We quickly decided to head back to the boat. On January 16, we headed out to look around a little bit. We checked out the Lincoln St. "mall". This is a street that has been closed to through traffic and converted to a kind of a park area. We checked out the stores there and were mildly disheartened to see that 'mallification' was occurring here. The charm of the small shops was slowly being sucked dry. We then walked down to Alton and wandered there for a bit before heading over to South Beach. At the time, we did not know that an arts festival was going on. The streets were extremely crowded with people, so we quickly exited South Beach and went in search of a grocery store. After finding one, and finishing our shopping, we returned to the boat. We spent the rest of the afternoon watching TV, reading and writing logs.
On January 17, not much happened. We spent the day on the boat checking on the work that was being completed. It was a quiet day. On January 18, we received the TCP/IP software that we needed in order to use our inmarsat phone with the computer, as well as several other things that we ordered. We spent the afternoon configuring and testing the software, and then used it to pull email. Our satelite connection works! That evening, we went to dinner with Jay on Mindemoya. We were looking for pizza and lasagna, what we got was Yuppie food! Actually, it wasn't bad, just exceptionally small portions. January 19 was another slow day. We did discover that all of the steps on the boat are teak! We decided to remove the carpeting on all of them and restore them back to their original look. It is amazing how that little bit of work improved the overall look of the boat! That evening, we met Jeffrey and Bruce for dinner. We went to a good italian restaurant for dinner. Then we headed to their house. We hadn't seen it since they first moved in. The house was much improved over the last time we saw it. Finally we headed home way to late in the evening. January 20 was a repeat of the rest of the week. That evening, we went to dinner with Roland and Amy. We headed to dinner at a nice steak house. At drinks before dinner, we talked about the lunar eclipse. During dinner, we talked about the lunar eclipse. After dinner, we talked about the lunar eclipse. We returned to the boat to give them a tour, and after another drink, we promptly forgot about the lunar eclipse and after walking them out, went to bed. I guess we really didn't need that last drink! We decided to not do anything starting on January 21, and that is exactly what we did. We relaxed for three days. On January 25, the work crew came back and we again supervised work. On January 26, while checking into the net, the SSB started acting up, it would not stay tuned. After checking all of our connections, we discovered that the terminal end on our switcher had gone bad. We replaced it, and the radio began functioning properly again, better than it had in months! On January 27, we moved the boat from C dock to D dock at the request of the marina. This was a traumatic experience, considering that we had been expecting to have to move anytime, and most of the day the wind was blowing 20+ knots! Finally at the end of the day, the wind dropped for about 15 minutes, just long enough for us to move the boat
Everything was quiet for 2 days. Most of the work was completed on the boat, and the final pieces were still being worked out. On January 30, a motor vessel on its way to Honduras requested that someone pass a message to friends that everything was OK on his boat. Someone volunteered in Marathon, but was unable to receive the message. We volunteered to pass it for them. On January 31, we went to an Internet cafe to download various patches for the computers as well as some new software. We went to install these on the Dell and discovered that the hard drive had crashed! Mike spent some time on the phone with Dell Tech Support (about an hour total) who finally agreed that we did, indeed, have a hard drive problem. They said they would send out a new hard drive for us