February 21, 2020 - February 27, 2020
One morning there was no wind, and Bob and I were both attacked by no-seeums. The problem with these bugs is you can’t see them and the bites are just a tiny prick until the next day when they swell up and itch like crazy. Consequently, we spent the next very windy day in a benedryl fog trying to combat the itchiness.
I’ve also been helping Bob test each one of our four batteries which is a royal pain in the neck. The first two batteries are in the cock pit locker so everything stored in the locker had to be pulled out and stowed in the cockpit. First thing in the morning one of the four batteries had to be disconnected, tested with a volt meter, hooked up to our electric inflator for an hour, disconnected from the inflator, tested with the volt meter, and then reconnected. The worst part was that the electric inflator sounded like a lawn motor running inside the cockpit. This procedure was repeated each morning for four days. The next two batteries are behind a drawer storage unit that had to be removed to test each of those two batteries. As you can see it was a long drawn out process with lots of disruption to our living space. When it was completed Bob sent the data to the battery company and we are waiting for a diagnosis. To me it looks like all of the batteries are OK.
Because of very high winds, we were marina bound for a couple of days. One bit of excitement was that in the middle of the night during this high wind event one of our dock lines broke and the electric cord and the spring line were the only thing holding the bow, not a good situation. Bob stayed on board to throw me a new bow line. I jumped off the boat and with the assistance of our neighbor got a new bow line in place and pulled the boat over next to the dock. The only thing we could figure was that the bow line chafed on the houzer pipe (the stainless steel hole in the toe rail made for lines to pass through). The next morning Bob repaired the dock line and put a leather chafe protector on it to prevent the line from breaking again. Fun times in paradise!
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| Sandy Toes is our favorite beach bar. You can see how it gets it's name. |
After lunch at Sandy Toes (great barbecue pork) we noticed that the bow line had chafed through the leather protector in just one day. This unleashed a mad rush to fix the problem. Bob decided the best solution was to use rubber hose as a chafe protector. Of course, the hose was stored under the quarter berth requiring me to remove all the stored items once again. Getting the hose onto the line was no easy task and required us to sew the line to a smaller line, feed that line through the hose, and generously grease the thicker line with vaseline so we could pull it through the hose. We also replaced the leather cafe guards on the spring lines with rubber hose as well. This should solve the chafing problem. One good outcome of tearing the quarter berth apart was getting our bikes out to use while we are at the marina. The next day we took some photos around the marina.
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| We found this lion fish swimming near the dock. They are an invasive species and all are encouraged to eat them. |
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| We find many clever boat names on our travels. |
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| You got to love palm trees! |
For the next few days I took a bike ride up to the entrance channel of the marina and all around. It’s great to have my bike to ride again and this marina with all of its docks and roads is a safe place to ride. We arranged to get a rental car on Wednesday and drove down to George Town to grocery shop at the Exuma Market and on the way back we stopped at Island Prime Meats to finish our shopping. We actually were able to get everything on our list for a change and spent a grand total of $240. After lunch at the Lighthouse Cafe and Ice Cream Parlor we spent the afternoon exploring the northern most area of Great Exuma Island. The roads were particularly narrow with plenty of pot holes in this part of the island making for a hair raising trip. I had to ignore Bob’s expressions of terror and focus fully on driving on the left side of the road.
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| Bob and I had the best lunch we've had yet in the Exumas here. |
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| This was the view of Paradise Bay we enjoyed from the porch of Lighthouse Cafe. |
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| The water is so shallow in this bay that these sand flats appear at low tide. |
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| Exuma Point Beach was the most northern of Great Exuma's beaches. |
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| An abandoned pier at Exuma Point Beach |
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| I enjoyed another walk on the beach. |
We have two more weeks left in our month long stay at The Marina at Emerald Bay.
Thanks for reading my blog.
