On to Eleuthra

The kids left on 4 January, my birthday. Although we loved having them visit, after they departed Ann and I needed a day or two to decompress. So for the next two days, other than a visit to the Jib Room’s streak night, we did very little. One thing we did do, however, was to invite our generator guru and friend Martin (from August Sun), over for dinner. His wife Kathy had gone back to the States for work (yes, she still does that four-letter word).

After our two days of rest, though, we had three tasks to accomplish. Each takes the better part of a day.

·         We had to clean the boat. No matter how careful they are, seven people can track a lot of sand and sea grass on board. Besides, it had been nearly three weeks since we had given her a good scrubbing. We did that on Monday.

·         We had to re-provision. Seven people, especially when three of them are growing teenagers and one is a hard-charging Marine, can eat quite a bit. Moreover, we were used to handling two people for dinner, not seven. We re-provisioned on Tuesday.

·         We had to change the oil in each of our main engines. We try to change it about every 150-200 hours. This, of course, is Ann’s favorite job. I have described it before, but sucking 5 gallons of oil out of the dipstick tube of each engine is a time-consuming chore. We changed the oil on Wednesday.

Then we started waiting. At first it was for the weather. It seemed we couldn’t get a break. There were two back-to-back cold fronts that came through the Bahamas and they both postponed our departure. I guess I should explain why cold fronts are such a pain in the neck even when they don’t bring seriously cold weather and that white-stuff-whose-name-will-never-be-mentioned-on-this-boat.

A cold front has three effects. The first, as you might expect, is that it gets a cooler. What amazes me is that the cooler temperatures don’t come over a few hours or a day, the come literally in a “front.” At Marsh Harbor, for example, I was outside working on the boat and a gust of wind came through. It was probably 75 degrees. Another gust came through seconds later and – I swear – it was ten to fifteen degrees colder. The coolness will often pass within a day or two unless the cold front stalls. In Marsh Harbor for the first week in January the first cold front stalled and a second cold front came right behind it. You know this because it was the same set of cold fronts that caused such terrible weather in the eastern US early this year.

What happens when a colder air mass meets warm, moisture-laden tropical air? You got it – rain. Sometimes it comes down in buckets and sometimes it’s just kind of a long-duration heavy mist. At any rate, cold fronts generally mean rain.

The third effect of a cold front is the wind that comes with it. In the Bahamas the trade winds are generally from the northeast. Before a cold front they change and start tracking in a clockwise pattern from NE-E-SE-S-SW. These winds can get kind of nasty and in moderately bad circumstances can have gusts over 30 MPH. With a really strong front they can be even more. Now, sail boaters like some wind, but not the kind that comes with a strong cold front. We power boaters prefer just enough wind to cool off on a warm day – not the kind that can capsize your boat! Wind, of course, can generate waves and waves can be really nasty. One of the worst effects is to have current going in one direction and wind moving in another; that makes it choppy. It can get choppy to the point the waves are many feet high – something no self-respecting boater, sailor, seaman, captain, admiral or anyone else wants to see.

So, back to Marsh Harbor. We saw one relatively weak cold front come through – with the accompanying rain, wind and cooler weather – just as the kids were leaving. It was followed by a stronger front two days later. The effect was to make miserable weather for nearly a week. Now if we had been planning on cruising within the Sea of Abaco we might have gone anyway. The Sea of Abaco is protected by numerous islands that cut the wind and waves substantially. But our plan was to spend a day cruising south through the Abaco, spend the night at Little Harbor, then head into the big ocean for the 50 miles trip to Royal Island. So we needed a couple of nice days in a row that we could predict a day ahead of time. So, we waited.

Just as the weather started to improve, I was checking the batteries to make sure they would be ready the next day when we started south. Ooops! One of the engine starting Batteries had literally blown up. I know. You hear that batteries can blow up, but I am not sure any of us have ever seen one. Well, I am now one of the few humans alive who has seen it – though I will say that I wish I weren’t. As I started thinking about it, I remembered a day a week or so earlier – while the kids were here – when we all heard a big BANG – like a door slamming. Well, we checked out the boat and could find nothing. We decided that it must have been just that – a door slamming – though we couldn’t determine which door it might have been or what might have caused it. It was no big thing. Fast forward one week. I just realized that I had solved the mystery. The engine cranking batteries are located under the floorboards. Apparently, one of the batteries blew up, lifting the floor board and allowing it to slam down – and it all sounded like a door slamming.  



One of these days we are going to publish a blog consisting
solely of Ann's pictures of flowers. This is one of them.

We disconnected the battery, cleaned out the battery compartment with baking soda and water and found that the engines would start just fine on two batteries. At first we were going to go ahead and leave the following as we had planned, but as I thought about it, I realized we would not be anywhere we could buy a new battery for several weeks, so I figured that maybe we should go ahead and get one in Marsh Harbor. We did.

At this point all I am willing to say is that the installation process did not go well and we had to hire an electrician to finish the job. Since all this happened on a Saturday, of course, we had to wait until Monday for the electrician. (To keep you gear heads interested let me just say that the battery saga is not over. Read on.)

On Tuesday we took off. The weather reports were a bit sketchy for later in the week, but it looked like we might be able to cross the Northeast Providence Channel on either Wednesday or Friday. We figured that even if these reports were wrong, we would be able to wait at Little Harbor until we could go. Finally, we were out of Marsh Harbor.



The cemetery at Spanish Wells

After we arrived at Little Harbor, I started looking at the weather reports in earnest. We had pretty much decided that we should stay at Little Harbor and wait for the front to pass – which would mean we wouldn’t leave until Friday. However, we figured we could wait until the following morning (Wednesday) to make the final decision. On Wednesday morning the weather reports were just as “iffy” as they had been all week. Just as we were ready to decide to postpone our departure we heard two boats on the radio, a sail boat that had just crossed into the ocean and a trawler that was just about to do so. At that point we figured “what the hell,” if they can do it we could too. So, off we went. We also decided that, since Wednesday night and Thursday were supposed to be such terrible days weather-wise that we would go to a marina in Spanish Wells rather than anchor at Royal Island as we had initially planned.

Yes, it was “lumpy,” much lumpier than I like it. Still, it wasn’t a terrible ocean crossing – except for one thing. Shortly after we started the trip I went down to the engine room to check the engines. While there, I noticed that the fuel system wasn’t behaving like I thought it should, so I made some adjustments that I would need to check every hour or so throughout the day. Although I don’t usually get seasick, I have just learned that when I have to go down into the engine room where it is hot and stuffy AND I have to stay there for any length of time AND the boat is rocking and rolling, apparently I can get very queasy. Moreover, when I have to go back several times throughout the day – every time, as a matter of fact, when I started to feel a little bit better – I can continue to feel queasy all day. In short, this was not one of my favorite ocean journeys.

Bonefishing on the sand flats at Spanish Wells

Finally, though, we passed through the Egg Island Cut and were on our way to Spanish Wells. We had been here last year and had stayed for several days so we knew it fairly well. Still, we discovered two things. First, we discovered a new restaurant, the “Shipyard.” I am here to tell you that it is somewhere between very good and excellent. Unlike any of the other restaurants in Spanish Wells, it is on the water (which automatically gains my favor) and it overlooks some shallow sand flats. It just so happens that shallow sand flats are where people fish for bonefish – with fly rods, no less. The food was good, the service surprisingly fast and the entertainment (watching bonefishermen ply their craft) was great!

As I said, though, we discovered a second thing. Remember the battery saga? The “old” battery in the new bank was heating up. I mean it was really heating up. While the other Batteries were about 80 degrees, this one was 130+. Okay, so we turned off the charger and it didn’t help. So we disconnected it, waited until it cooled off and took it outside. We reconnected the other batteries and decided that we would go with two batteries in the port engine bank. So far, so good.

I know that many of you aren’t going to have much sympathy with our battery story. “Everyone” knows that when you replace one battery in a bank you should replace all of them. Ok. But the batteries are $300 each, and I know that I am going to have some electrical work done this summer that will probably result in new batteries anyway. Can you blame me for trying to save a buck – or nine hundred?

 

ANN’S NOTES:    OK….I have been told that I only have a limited amount of time to get my two cents worth in…we have to take the computer into town to one of the local Wi-Fi hot spots and send this edition on its  way.

I do want everyone to know that the Christmas visit with Lisa, Dave, Nik, Trent and Maddy was wonderful. Yes, we did need some time to regroup   but we have earned that right as parents and grandparents of a very active family.

Changing the oil, when we did it the first few times was a pain in the a**, but now we are much more organized and patient. We know how long it will take, how many rolls of oil sucking rags we need and as long as we have ten, one gallon empty jugs, we are good to go. We also need two very large oil filters, that Michael has figured out how to take off with minimal amount of mess. I think one of the things we are going to do this summer is hook up a pump on both engines that will suck out the oil; we have the set up, just not the pump part.

Does anyone have any questions about batteries, that I may be able to answer for you? Remember Radar from MASH? He could hear helicopters before anyone could see them? I have very good hearing and I was the one that heard a faint sound coming from under the battery compartment. It sounded like my pressure cooker before it starts to choo-choo and begins cooking the meal. Anyway…I pulled the hatch cover and went to get my stethoscope to listen to the battery making the noise. I found five, silent batteries and one that was boiling. You know…once a CNA....always a CNA. I never thought I would use my stethoscope to listen to batteries but it sure did come in handy and confirm it was boiling and that was NOT GOOD.

As far as the cold fronts go…I LOVE them. As most of you know I am not really a hot and humid kinda girl so any type of cool/cold breeze is more than fine with me. I can even wear a little make up when it is cooler and I don’t look like a zombie with big round red circles around my eyes.

The one day we spend in Little Harbor was nice, we saw more than a few turtles. They looked like big dinner plates floating in the water and then you would see them come up for air.

Well…I think my time is about up…

Thank you for reading our blog and following us on this adventure….Blessing to each and every one of you…

Traveling Soul…OUT