Radio silence no more
Time flies when you are having fun. It's been over a month since my last post - time to break the radio silence.
Since early March, we’ve sailed 230 nautical miles and left the Exumas behind. We made a quick stop-over in Nassau and then landed in the Abaco islands, all still in the Bahamas. To see our track on a map, check out this link.
Along the way, Chris has been busy maintaining the boat and wrapping up a few straggling cases and assorted legal work. On my end, I have been hammering away at the keyboard to keep up with my full-time job; Great American Insurance is unfortunately not yet on island time. But that said, there’s still plenty of time for exploring and fun on the way, just as I was hoping as we started out.
We have also had Justus and Eva for a week of spring break (awesome) and just said goodbye to our dear friends Stan and Wendy Mambort who spent a long weekend with us.
And what a surreal and fun moment it is to welcome old friends like Stan and Wendy aboard, the couple we’ve seen so many times for drinks and dinner at either their or our patio in Mt. Lookout, Cincinnati. Now all of a sudden, here they are on the dock of the marina on a small island in the Bahamas, ready to jump onboard our new floating home. The patio has been substituted for the cockpit of our boat and the sounds of cicadas in the woods and the hum of traffic in the distance have been replaced by lapping waves and the whistling sound of wind in the rig and the hum of the wind generator. Many things that have changed, yet the friendship and fun remain the same.
With that much time having passed since my last post, a few bullet points of observations will have to suffice to sum it up:
o It must be the waves, the fresh air and the sounds; on our overnight blue-water sail from Nassau to the Abacos, we had Justus, Eva and (as always) Lucy napping soundly in no time. I can relate, I recall always getting very sleepy on long passages as a kid.
o. The Abacos are beautiful and heartbreaking. The category 5 hurricane Dorian hit the Abacos head on in 2019. The devastation was almost complete and you still see evidence of it everywhere. The Abaco islands are rebuilding but it will take time.
o. Broken water maker and broken generator = hassle and unwanted marina visits. We now have an appointment with Just Catamarans on May 2 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to sort this out. We’ll replace the broken water maker with a high output, working (emphasis working) unit that can produce 40 gallons of water per hour. The generator needs to be fixed or replaced, but an option is also to do away with it, still TBD. We are adding a considerable amount of solar panels and are switching to a huge bank of lithium batteries. There is no such thing as too much fresh water or too much power.
o. Yay, finally a few really good meals! As we hoped, Abacos (despite the hurricane damage) has more good restaurants to offer than we found in the Exumas. The Abaco Inn, for example, sits on a gorgeous narrow spit of land between the Sea of Abaco and the Atlantic ocean. There we had two excellent meals in an “island chic” setting. Sometimes faux rugged is pretty darn nice. Especially when it tastes good.
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