March 12-15 Ides of March!

March 12 -13

 I think I already told you what we did. I hope so because now I can’t remember. I was so happy to have the internet working that I typed the post without saving it.

But to re-cap... we ran the motor and spent time looking up battery charging. Rick talked to the battery guy, and Mark [the locomotive builder] sent some information, which we couldn’t access because that’s the time the Internet quit.  A

We went to shore with Carol, Deb and Shep and rented a golf cart for two hours and w all got shopping done. Rick picked up some distilled water for the batteries and I got some fresh vegetables. We are rapidly moving away from the apple/ lettuce & cucumber availability.  I heard an ugly rumour from one of the boats ahead of us that bread in the islands is $6.50 a loaf. It’s cheaper to go out to eat than buy groceries.  A lobster dinner with grouper and 3 veg's is $26.00! Unfortunately we don’t like lobster. There has to be somewhere the locals buy food.

We also stopped at the Dolphin House because they missed it on their walk around and wanted to see it. The gift shop was open and Deb and Carol bought a few little things. I bought Vol. II of the Bimini Island history by Ashley Saunders. It is really interesting and full of information about everything in the island.

We got back to the boat, had a bathing suit shower, and then went over to Offline for happy hour, where we talked about the weather and probable windows.  Back to the boat for dinner and bed. [This is starting to sound like the narrative from “Alice’s Restaurant”]

March 14

We got up and started to prep the boat for leaving. Jake and Carol came by to say they were leaving too, and we concluded that we were pretty much going in the same direction.  We left at 10:30; they were leaving around 2:00pm. Of course we expected them to pass us!

They were going to anchor a Cat Cay, but that was only 8 miles south of Bimini and we wanted to keep going. They had planned to leave from Cat Cay and do a 23-hour crossing to Nassau. I guess they changed their minds because they caught up with us around 6:00 pm. They had left at noon.

We anchored about 30 miles off Bimini in 12 feet of water with absolutely nothing for 50 miles in any direction. We were about 1/4 mile ‘off the channel.’

Explanation: there are lines on the charts giving headings to different locations. You need to set waypoints in your GPS or follow the compass heading to make sure that you actually get there because there are absolutely no landmarks out here. And the clouds are no help because they keep moving!

SO everyone follows these courses, and you need to be “off the Course” so no-one runs into you at night. The silly thing is the water is only 9-12 feet deep for hundreds of miles. That’s why it’s called Bahamas’ Banks. It’s also very choppy. Because it’s so shallow the slightest wind sets up and annoying chop that can make even the strongest stomach seasick [like me].

I pulled a winch apart and repaired it. Rick put the control arm for the Auto helm on before it got dark, then we had dinner and went to bed. He slept, I didn’t. The squeaking , tossing, banging kept me awake until 4 am and when it was time to get up I finally fell asleep!

March 15...Ides of March

Why do I remember that from my Latin course? It wasn’t a good day for Julius Caesar. I’m hoping it turns out to be better for us! We have 40 miles to go to get off this @$**&% choppy water. We are not heading for Nassau. Instead we will go to Morgan’s Bluff on Andros Island. I wonder if it was named for Captain Morgan the pirate? Once we get out into the Northwest Passage [not the cold one]

We can head down towards Georgetown and re-supply there if we need to.

So running with the motor for 8 hours yesterday has brought the batteries back up and we will be doing the same [probably 10 hours today] so we should be good. They went down because we had no shore power for 7 days and the solar panel couldn’t put out enough to run all the lights and the freezer and frig.  I guess we should have worked on getting the wind generator working before we left instead of leaving it in the storage locker!

We are travelling about 45 miles today across the Bahamas Banks and all in 12 feet of water or less. The water is so clear we can see the bottom, including huge starfish, sea cucumbers and our own shadow on the sea floor.