Preparing to head East

We still look to be on track to leave tomorrow, Sunday for the Exumas but we’ll make a final check of the weather before we leave. The front came through last night about midnight with fairly high winds, lots of rain, thunder and lightning.  The shore power was out when we got back from dinner but fortunately it came back up before the storm hit. We had he AC running while we were watching the movie Troy during the blitz but by the time the movie was over the rain subsided. Weather is cooler now than it has been. The locals are in sweatshirts and long pants.

Since we've been here in Nassau most days there have been rolling blackouts. Here in the marina the shore power has gone down about 7 in the evening until about 1030. Yesterday we were downtown and the power was out for a while. Last night we were at dinner with some other folks and the power went out in the restaurant. There has been lots of discussions about the situation with the government run power company and supposedly next month an American company is taking over the management and hopes that the service will improve.

We’re spending today doing final provisioning and picking up a few items we will need before we go. In the morning I will refill the water tanks and the jerry cans I have so we can minimize our resupply needs. In many of the places there is water for a cost. There are some places where it is free but it has to be dinghied out in jerry cans. We have a 250 gallon water tank that will take a long time to fill 20G at a time.  We figure we will carry water each time we go in. But once out in the island we can reduce our consumption significantly. For one thing we won’t shower every day. We can bathe in the water and then rinse off in the cockpit. We will also wash our dishes with ocean water and then rinse in fresh water. We should be able to get a month out of our supply and then we can top off when we get to a place with abundant supply.

This morning I was adjusting the dock lines when a man and woman came over to me and asked if we were going to Georgetown. He explained that he was helping her find a boat to the Caribbean and could she go as far as Georgetown. I explained that we were really stopping at several other places and it would be a while before we got to Georgetown and she would probably be able to find someone with a more direct schedule. We have discussed this situation and often joked about having someone who would do the cooking and cleaning to earn passage but the difficulties and risks associated with the reality of that militate against it. While we enjoy meeting new people and would enjoy company having someone on board we don’t know is something we haven’t adjusted to. Maybe we should be more spontaneous but we enjoy just being alone together.

This trip has really served as a shakedown as we completed a great deal of untested work before we left. We also have never done this kind of long-term live aboard sailing before so it has all been new to us. It’s one thing to read about living like this but it is different actually doing it. Some folks cruise back and forth to the Bahamas for several years but we are heading out next year after we revisit the Northeast and then back through the Bahamas on our way farther south. With this trip experience we need to go back and look at what we need to fix and what more stuff we need to buy. Improving our communications is probably most important at this point.

I mentioned to Linda the other day that I have thoughts about fall and football season because it seems like we have been in summer. But, in reality our biological calendar will need to get recalibrated to adjust to the endless summer. I don’t miss the cold and am glad we missed this past winter.