Sunday, January 21st to Friday, February 9th, 2017

Well, its been a challenging few weeks since we arrived, but we are back on the boat and happy to be here. Nothing serious, just viruses and weather to contend with as well as things on the boat to be repaired.

Lee is sick with the flu before we even leave for the Bahamas and within hours of arriving, Randy comes down with a bad cold too. Nonetheless, we manage to get the boat prepped and into the water. While we are working on the boat we stay in a cute cottage on the ocean called ‘The House on the Point’. Very rustic, but very nice.

We spend three days cleaning and putting things together to launch on the Monday, but unfortunately, the weather turns bad and a storm front moves through the Green Turtle area just as we are scheduled to launch. Our Launch is moved to Tuesday and even then, the winds are pretty high. Once Silver Maple is in the water, Randy tries to fire-up the engine. Nothing. Dead battery. The bow-thruster battery is dead too so both are replaced. And, the winds are so high that we don’t move beyond the wall where they put us in the water. We just tie Silver Maple on and spend the night right there.

The next day, the winds are calmer so we head over to the Green Turtle Club in White Sound, the next sound over. We spend the day doing final prep and putting sails up.

In the morning, we are up early and on the water to do the short ocean crossing through the Whale Cay passage and into the Sea of Abaco. It is a beautiful morning and we have a great sail over to Marsh Harbour where we spend the rest of the day provisioning and stocking the boat with essentials like wine and groceries.

In the morning, we are off to Hope Town. Randy is still sick so we lie low once we arrive until he gets his health back on track. To make things worse, on the day we arrive, the marina has a power surge and our battery charger blows. Ugh! That was over two weeks ago and Randy has spent every day since trying to arrange to have a new one shipped to us here in the Bahamas. The good news is that it appears to be close now. Last we heard Fedex has it in Nassau. Fingers crossed we will see it next week.

It seems that we have been tied to the dock in Hope Town forever, but now that Randy is feeling back to normal, we are planning to take off tomorrow and get back out on the water. Yeah!