April 9

April 9, 2015

Yesterday afternoon walking through Georgetown, we ran into Cordell again. He was talking about all the little things one cannot get in the town, like sewing needles! He was looking for them so today I will take one of my packages over to Chat ‘n Chill for him.  It’s interesting how friends are made here. He recognizes us wherever we are and is as interested in us as we are in him. He wants us to help him organize the “farm” when we come back... to get involved in teaching stuff.  He says we can have all the free docking and showers we want when he gets his campground ready. Rick was talking about Doug Ryan being the one who taught him celestial navigation, and Cordell asked Rick to teach him how to navigate by stars, officially. All the Bahamians do it naturally but they [or he] don’t know the true names of the Constellations. You can learn anything you want off the internet but it’s better to do it with another person and that’s what we are all looking for.

We have been sitting here for two weeks fretting about the batteries, and yesterday when I called Flamingo and Amazing Grace to tell them we had to go to a marina to charge up our batteries, Ross came back with “ borrow my generator and charger’   So did Anneteak, who was listening. If he had said something two weeks earlier, because every morning there is an open Net where you can ask for help or advice, we could have had this problem solved a long time ago. But Rick can’t seem to ask anybody for anything!!

We came back from Georgetown and were summoned to the beach to play dominoes. Stephan came over s well. He is from Paris France, and is the captain of a 45 foot Lagoon catamaran that is here until June. He has captained boats from all over Europe and the Caribbean.  He is a couple of years younger than Liz, and yes, Liz, we asked what his mother’s name was.  His mother’s name is Miriam... close to Mary, but she is not Canadian. He is not our cousin! Although he said we could adopt him if we wanted to. 

After playing dominoes until about 5 pm, we decided to have dinner together -all 7 of us, and Stephan invited us to have it on his boat, [because we were all dying to see it!]  So I took a salad, Stephan made pasta and Amazing Grace and Flamingo brought ribs.  It was great! We talked all night and got home at 11:30 pm.

Today Rick is going to help Stephan with some wiring and Ross brought his generator and charger for our batteries.  We lent Ross our water jug to help him fill up his tank. [You have to bring water from shore a jug at a time because the water tap is inside the lake and you can only get dinghies in there.] Jim talked to me last night about fixing winches and this morning he told me he did it! See what I mean about friends? It’s great!  Now if only C-Soul were here!!!

We had a long discussion yesterday about asking for help, so today he said he would come to town and ask someone about the dinghy motor. I asked him who and he said he wasn’t sure. I handed him the radio and said, “ASK FOR HELP” when he did three people came back to him with the name of a good small motor mechanic that they had all used in town and the guy drives the water taxi. Now how would Rick ever have figured that out himself??? Apparently old dogs can learn new tricks... sometimes it takes a big stick!!!

Today I’m going to re-learn the dinghy. I used to run it by myself when we lived in Grenada but it’s a little harder to start now and I forget where all the controls are. I can drive it when we’re running but I can’t remember how it stops and starts.

Saturday and Sunday are our best weather windows for moving out of the harbour so we are going north to Staniel Cay to wait for Doug Ryan, then we are coming back to Georgetown before heading to Allen’s Cay to help out with the iguana’s. We all agreed last night it’ very hard to move once you’ve been sitting somewhere for awhile. You don’t want to disconnect from the friendships in case you can’t find them again or new ones.

So I’m posting this short one so you will know where we are, in case we can’t get internet in Staniel Cay. I will call Liz, my awesome kid, and she will let everyone know what’s going on.

Ferry leaving for Nassau

Elvis's Water Taxi - he's also the harbour master. Good boat colour, eh?

Flamingo in the sunset

Ross preparing ribs, Stephan holding knife to help [before Ross dumped two gasses of red wine on the teak floors!]

Jim[Amazing Grace] me Cheryl [Jim' wife] Stephan captain of Jasmine City [this awesome boat] Ross[Flamingo] and Alyson [a drifter looking for a boat to sail on going south]

Great food... great company... great boat. This is the port half of the  cockpit - salon is bigger!!