Slow lane

It's really weird doing regular blog updates instead of on our facebook page but this is how it's got to be without regular wifi. Kind of like the old days when there weren't any old people on FB. If we dropped the hook closer to town we could possibly pick up the restaurant where we ate the other night but it's pretty shallow over there. I let Deb pick out the spot to drop the hook now as I am too protective of the bottom paint on the keel. Deb doesn't seem to care. The difference between Deb finding a spot and Capt. Anxiety finding one is well, obvious I think. Deb will stress over the depths but keep it to herself. I stress over the depth and let everyone aboard know that -

"Uh oh, eight feet! Shit! Not going any further. I might be too close to that boat and I don't want to be behind a trawler or that Frenadian. Is there enough room here to let out 100 feet? If the wind shifts will we be too close to shore? What's the tide again? I'm not sure if this is the right spot. What do you think? Why is that guy looking at us? We too close? Maybe I should circle again."

Just so you know, I can find a decent spot as well, but I tend to talk too much about the process and we end up further out. It drives Deb nuts. In order to remain married I gave up the previous routine of me finding a spot, stopping the boat and telling Deb to hold position while I run up to drop the anchor. That was not working. The current process is good. Hand signals are all that are needed. Remember that we have a manual windlass. We can't just press a remote to drop the big boy. Some day.

We are slowly moving north along Eluethera. Today the wind is down under ten from the south. Don't feel like motoring so we will hang around. Tonight the wind picks up to 15 knots and hangs around until noon Monday. We will try to ride that wind in the morning and make it up to Hatchett Bay without disturbing Mr. Yanmar too much. We're at the point now where running the diesel in this beautiful environment seems like a sin. We love just lazily sailing along knowing we are in someone's vacation photo.

I'm not saying we will sail off the anchor. Nope. We watch people do this and botch it up all the time. We had a sailboat in a crowded anchorage next to us do this and drift downwind out of control past two nice new cats. The cat skippers did not look happy. I'm the one who wants a new paint job but they went the other way. You raise the mainsail and let it flog itself in the wind. You shout to be heard over the flapping canvas. You pull your boat to the anchor with your windlass. You raise your anchor and the boat sails away downwind until you jibe while running back to the cockpit. Dumb. Entertaining, but dumb.

We were at anchor the other day in about eight feet of beautiful clear blue water and Debra was entertaining thoughts of jumping in to cool off. While getting the cockpit in order after a sail, a six foot shark slowly goes past the hull. Deb yelled for me to come see and sure enough the damn thing was like close to the boat waiting for dinner to jump in. We both decided a cold beer in the cockpit would be better.

Both Deb and I are not big swimmers. We can swim but tend not to. I am more likely to jump in than Deb but that's not saying much. I do have to check on the zincs, so I'm going in sometime soon but the sharks really freak me out despite all the statistics I took at RIT.

Not sure I have anything else to talk about. Maybe a word about food. It's expensive here. Fresh veggies are scarce except in the bigger markets, which aren't that big. Not sure about meat. I wouldn't know. Some folks say it's reasonable. Before we left we bought some dehydrated veg's. We used some of them and they are great. Peppers, onions, carrots and celery can be scarce at times so we tapped into those. Items that are insanely priced? I love olives and pickles, but at $5 or 6 bucks I resist. A half gallon of heavy cream was $10. That's some very expensive creamy tomato soup I'll be making. Cheese is high priced as well unless you buy the "local" stuff which is basically cheese flavored wax. You don't have to fill your boat with food before you go. You can re-stock. You just have to dig into your pocket a bit deeper. I know when we get back to the land of plenty we will go crazy over a farmers market. Nothing beats fresh.

I guess our biggest surprise about this trip so far is the dryness. Very little rain. Desert islands. No birds. Only a few Dolphins. Plenty of sharks and rays. Few palm trees. Don't get me wrong though, the islands are beautiful. Just different than I imagined. One thing I can say though is that if you are looking for secluded beaches, look no further. Most times we had the whole beach to ourselves. Pretty amazing.

Not much else to talk about. Life is slow. Life is good.

Cheers!
P

Oh, you may have realized I do not have a speel cheeker on this app for the Iridium. Sorry aboot that.


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