We are back!

We are back! After getting successfully through the winds and squalls in Green Turtle Cay, we dropped the mooring on Sat. morning and left to sail to Great Sale Cay and wait to leave for States on Monday.  After arriving we decided to leave along with another boat on Sunday afternoon instead. This was a poor choice. We should have gone with our original plan.

The winds were light  at first so we motor sailed up past Mantinilla Shoal and out into the Atlantic after dark on Sunday night where we had a bumpy ride in large swells with shifting wind direction all night long keeping us from getting much sleep at all. Monday the wind was again light and we finally decided to motor due west to the Gulf Stream in hopes of getting some assistance from the current. Well that worked and we motor sailed at over 8 kts the rest of the day and through the night until on Tuesday about 5 a.m. we exited the Gulf Stream to turn toward Charleston. The winds were pretty much non existent at that point and without the current to help we just slowly motored north. It made for a slow go. 

The good new was that with such a flat and quiet sea we both could catch up on some much needed sleep. The best part was we had 3 different groups of dolphins meet up with us and swim along in Spunky's bow waves for quite some time welcoming us back. The first group had about 4 or 5 large dolphins and the second and third groups were smaller but each had 7. They would gather at the bow and swim along side Spunky just under the surface and then come out of the water and swim off to the side. They are so graceful and keep pace so effortlessly.  We also saw 6 huge sea turtles swimming past.

 The bad news was that without wind it took us til after 11:00 pm to reach the harbor entrance in Charleston and we did not reach our anchorage until midnight. We were both exhausted and it was challenging to find a spot to drop the anchor in the dark. 

This morning we moved into Charleston City Marina and filled fuel and water tanks and washed all the salt off Spunky. We are trying to take it a little easy. We have heard from another boat that the ICW is quite shallow in spots north of Charleston. We had planned to take off Friday and go up the ICW to avoid the 30 kt. winds forecast off shore for Thursday and Friday. Now we are not sure what we will do. We will have to try to get through the shallow areas at mid to high tide and timing that can be iffy. Then we must go outside again at Winyah Bay or Cape Fear to bypass a bridge at Snow's Cut which is being worked on so that we can no longer fit under it. We will sail overnight and come back inside at Beaufort, NC and then stay on the ICW the rest of the way back.

Things are never easy. However the weather today here is beautiful and warm. We are hopeful that Spring has indeed arrived and we shall be back in the Chesapeake soon. 

Look forward to hearing from everyone on your springtime/summer plans.

E and J

Back in the USA

We are now in Charlestown, SC.  We sailed 400 miles from Great Sale in the Bahamas directly here.  Our timing wasn't good and we arrived here in the middle of the night.  We did great riding the Gulf Stream at over 8 knots.  When we left it there was no wind and we motored the last 24 hours.  I have never seen the ocean so flat.  We had lots of dolphins swim along with us and also saw some giant sea turtles.  It was very pleasant but boring and slow.  I finally took down the main sail and never bothered to turn off the auto pilot or turn the boat.  

Hope you have a wonderful week.  Our phones are now working and we get regular internet almost anytime we want.  I think it will be Netflex tonight. 

Last Wifi

This is our last shot at wifi.  We will check weather in the morning and then take off.  We will leave here, Green Turtle Cay, and then go to either Fox Town or Great Sale Cay.  We will then head out to cross back to the states on Monday.  We were going to leave Sunday but we are going to wait for the waves to settle down.

It's about 500 miles to Charleston.  If we can we will keep going to Beaufort, NC. 

Once there we will travel on the Intra Coastal Waterway.

When we get back we will activate our phones and get internet all the time.  

Tonight we are supposed to have some high winds and rain.  We just had a bad squall with high winds.  We are hopeful that it is over but we may get more.  We tired and ready to get back.  We have met some really great people but I think we are ready to move to land if the boat sells.  

I can always tell where Elyse's head is.  She has been online for two days looking at houses in Baltimore.  We think we can afford it there.  She has even been searching for opportunities to house sit. 

We will check email in the morning before we leave.  We love you and can't wait to see you.

Dad (John) & Mom (Elyse)

Heading back to the USA

This may be the last update until we return to the States. We spent Easter Sunday in Great Guana watching the egg hunt at Nippers which is a very popular outdoor restaurant overlooking the Atlantic. The staff hides eggs in the breakers for folks to hunt with their snorkel gear. We just watched from the restaurants upper deck. We have really enjoyed being anchored for the past few days in Fisher's Bay. We watched several sea turtles swim just off of Spunky's bow. There was a little excitement when a boat began dragging in the anchorage and the owners were not on board. Troy form Dive Guana went out in his motor boat and let out more rode and backed down on the anchor so they wouldn't run up on the rocks or hit another boat.

On Monday due to a shift in the winds we sailed back over to Treasure Cay to wait out the west wind. When the winds come from any direction with a westerly component in the Abacos boats try to find a sheltered anchorage as many of the Cays are exposed to the west. Tuesday morning when the winds became favorable we left Treasure Cay again to sail around the Whale to Green Turtle Cay.

The Whale is a Cay that lies along the Atlantic and boats must go around it out of the Sea of Abaco and open to the swells and waves from the north. It needs to be passed in calm weather. We made it around and we are now on a mooring ball in Black Sound off of Green Turtle Cay. Our outboard is not starting so John rowed over this morning to see if we can get it serviced. Once that is done we will move into Black Sound Marina as we will not be able to easily get to shore and back to the mooring without our outboard. 

The weather guru has forecast high winds and bad squalls for Friday into Saturday morning with gusts from 50 to 70 kts so everyone is trying to find safe harbor for the blow. As I sit here typing the Sound is beginning to fill up with lots of boats. It will be fairly crowded by tomorrow and then the issue of boats dragging their anchors in the high winds becomes a larger problem. It means folks will sit up late watching the boats around them and being prepared to deal with a dragging anchor. We will leave here at the crack of dawn Sat. morning after the winds die down and head for either Strangers Cay or Great Sale Cay and anchor in preparation for crossing the Gulf Stream on Sunday through Tuesday Those cays are both just rocky islands with nothing on them but they provide sheltered anchorage in prevailing winds. We hope to end up in  either Charleston or Beaufort where we will continue up the ICW to the Chesapeake. 

It is really lovely here today. Warm temps and soft breezes. It is hard to believe that things will get really rough on Friday but then we never know for sure how things will be. Often it is not as bad as forecast and sometimes it is worse. 

Yesterday we filled our fuel tanks to the brim so we will have almost enough fuel if we had to motor all the way across the GS. It is mostly just for safety backup as we sail a lot of the time without the engine running. It looks like the wind speed and direction will get us by sail alone at least to the Gulf Stream and then we can ride the GS up to the Carolinas.  

We look forward to being back stateside soon and seeing some close by friends and hearing from the rest of you.

E and J

Great Guana

We left Treasure Cay this morning. Treasure Cay is a beautiful resort on Grand Bahama. The beach is long with clean powdery sand lined with huge homes and the town homes along the harbor are all painted with bright colors.

 We spent two days at anchor in the small anchorage with our friend Debbie on Illusions. We also caught up with Ken and Sara on Alegria a beautiful Cabo Rico 38. We went to pizza night at Treasure Cay Marina on Thursday. It was mobbed with locals, cruisers and all the families with kids on spring break that have flown in from the States. 

We arrived in Great Guana this morning and came in to Grabbers for a beer and internet connection. Our booster will have to be returned to the manufacturer when we return to the US as we cannot get power to it no matter what we have tried so we only get internet when we come into shore. 

The high temps are in the low 70's and the lows in the 60's. Too cold for me!! Tomorrow things will start warming up once again. We are watching the weather to see when we can head back but it doesn't look good all the way to next weekend. We hear that the temps are low on the east coast down to Florida so we are just as happy staying here rather than going back even if we could (which we can't) to cold windy days on our way up to the Chesapeake. 

We just looked at the forecast through next Sunday and don't see an opportunity to cross back to the states.  We were hoping to sail from the top of the Bahamas to South or North Carolina.  Last year we were able to make it to Charleston.  Monday we will move farther north and west.  We had hoped to go to Green Turtle Cay and then to Great Sail Cay and on to the US.  We are looking at other islands now where we might stop along the way such as Manjack and Spanish Cay.

Hope you all have a Happy Easter,

Happy Easter

We are now in Treasure Cay.  It's a beautiful resort.  Tomorrow we will go to Great Guana.  We will be there through Easter.  We will then move to Green Turtle Cay where we will top of with fuel and wait for weather.  This morning the weather guy said there would be no window until at least Friday a week from tomorrow and then there are no promises.

Elyse has been walking and I think the exercise helps her back a little.  We keep looking at the weather in the states and wonder why we are rushing back.  We heard it was 39 in Palm Beach.  It is in the low 70's here and in the 50's at night. Great sleeping.


We are going to a friend's boat for drinks and then taking the dingy in for pizza night.
Hope you all have a great Easter.  We are really looking forward to seeing you.


Love,
Dad along with Elyse

Marsh Harbor, again

Well we are still in Marsh Harbor. On Friday with our raw water strainer leaking big time and our fridge not working at all, we decided we had better make a determined effort to get assistance before everything closed up for the weekend. We removed the broken bolt on the strainer and John took a taxi to a distant boatyard to have a new bolt fabricated to fit. It only took a few hours once we figured out who could do the job so we were very hopeful that the strainer issue would be resolved. 

The refrigerator was another deal. We had been fussing with it for a week or more trying to find a bad connection. A call to the boatyard that installed it brought the suggestion of water in the coolant which would have to be drained and recharged. John just didn't think that was the problem. Last year after the freezer and frige were only 1 year old the controller went bad on the freezer and we had to have it replaced. John thought it was the same issue with the refrig but the tech at Frigoboat and the guy at the boatyard had different thoughts and not being confident we decided to get someone to look at it. For over a week it would go off for several hours and then start once again. In the off times we would take ice from the freezer and pack the refrig in order to keep 3 months of my VERY expensive medication at the proper temp. By Friday it had been off for 2 days and we were pretty sure it was not coming back on. We called around and found a refrig guy who was working on 2 other boats but said he would call on Sat. when he was finished with those jobs. By 4 on Sat. there had been no call (island time) so we were set to give up and just keep icing down the frig until we could get back to the states but lo and behold at 4:45 pm Sean called and said he was on his way and could we pick him up at the dinghy dock? (in the States one always has to take the boat into a marina as the contractors almost never come out to your anchorage). He came out with all his recharging equipment and after trying another controller he confirmed that the controller was indeed dead. So this was the second one to fail in a system less than 2 years old although we had been assured that it was very "rare " for any of the parts to fail on these units!!! 

Now we have our two major issues resolved. John did a temp fix on the third leak. We could now leave if it were not for another cold front moving through which brought high winds and t-storms. We are waiting out the weather and are hoping to move on to Treasure Cay or Great Guana by tomorrow or Wed. 

The good news is that we were able to get to shore today to fill our propane tank, grocery shop and pick up email (our booster antenna is still not working).

 Life is good and the Bahamas are beautiful. 

E and J

Marsh Harbor

We are in Marsh Harbor at anchor and visiting the internet cafe as our booster which allows us to use internet on Spunky is not working for some reason. We just returned from Maxwell's Grocery Store. It is very well stocked and either I'm just getting numb to them or the prices aren't as high as the rest of the Bahamas. 

We moved Sat. afternoon from Spanish Wells where we anchored off the shore of Russell Is., as the winds were supposed to be 20 kts out of the North, to the west side of Egg Island in preparation for our crossing of the NE Providence Channel early Sunday a.m. We were anchored with 2 other boats. One left at around 3 a.m. and we were anchor up at 6:30. It was a good motor sail. The sea was fairly flat and we were through Little Harbor Cut into the Sea of Abaco  and anchor down at Lynyard Cay by 3:00. 

John spent the rest of the afternoon trying to repair two leaks in our cooling system. One was the raw water strainer.  The bolt holding the lid on broke and it could not be tightened enough to keep it from leaking. The broken bolt set up required drilling a new hole and finding a piece of metal to hold it in place. The second leak involved a broken piece where a pipe screws into the heat exchanger. John rigged a repair with 5200 and rescue tape. Both are temp fixes but will get us home to States we hope. 

By Monday a.m. I was anxious to move up to Marsh Harbor hoping to find more permanent parts for the repairs. No luck with that so we are going with Plan B and hoping things hold together til we get home. 

We got together with our friend Debbie on Illusions who has spent all her time in the Abacos this winter. We will meet her for dinner tonight. We spent the late morning with her catching up on old friends and what she has been doing since we saw her last in Melbourne. 

We are both enjoying our trip. My back has been giving me trouble again. We will stay in Abacos for a few weeks and then look for a weather window to cross to Charleston or Beaufort, NC. 

Hope the winter is over wherever you may be,

Elyse and John

Marsh Harbor

Took this last night from the boat.

Marsh Harbor

We are now in Marsh Harbor.  Great place.  The biggest town in the Abacos.