Thursday, March 31, 2011
Bomber outboard bracket... we hope!!! (thanks for the word Mark!)
Here is the new outboard bracket! Brian rocks!
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Bullock's Harbour/ Great Harbour Cay
Well we are safe and sound in Great Harbour Cay in the Berry Islands. We are well rested, showered, and feeling pretty good in spite of the not so great news on our inboard diesel engine.
There is a single diesel mechanic here who seems fairly knowledgeable. The gist of the issue is that it's going to be over $1,000 to fix it, it's going to take a while, and it may or may not entirely fix the engine. Uh thanks for that! SOOOO we are going back to an outboard engine for the time being! Brian is a fantastic fixer/problem solver/can-do-anything guy and I swear he built a "bomber" outboard bracket out of stuff we already have aboard. He had the metal, teak boards, and bolts we needed to build a bracket! Crazy! (or always thinking of the what ifs I guess!).
Anyway we will pretty much be able to motor as fast as we could with the inboard and the Honda outboard is a GREAT engine (knock on some wood, please! I beg you!!).
We should be done with that project tomorrow and will hopefully be hanging out here until Saturday when we plan to motor/sail around the island and then on down to Devil's and Hoffman's Cay where there is a nice protected anchorage for us to sit and wait for weather so we can cross to Eleuthera.
I will post some pics soon!
Until next time!! XO Nicole and the crew
There is a single diesel mechanic here who seems fairly knowledgeable. The gist of the issue is that it's going to be over $1,000 to fix it, it's going to take a while, and it may or may not entirely fix the engine. Uh thanks for that! SOOOO we are going back to an outboard engine for the time being! Brian is a fantastic fixer/problem solver/can-do-anything guy and I swear he built a "bomber" outboard bracket out of stuff we already have aboard. He had the metal, teak boards, and bolts we needed to build a bracket! Crazy! (or always thinking of the what ifs I guess!).
Anyway we will pretty much be able to motor as fast as we could with the inboard and the Honda outboard is a GREAT engine (knock on some wood, please! I beg you!!).
We should be done with that project tomorrow and will hopefully be hanging out here until Saturday when we plan to motor/sail around the island and then on down to Devil's and Hoffman's Cay where there is a nice protected anchorage for us to sit and wait for weather so we can cross to Eleuthera.
I will post some pics soon!
Until next time!! XO Nicole and the crew
Monday, March 28, 2011
Detour to Great Harbour Cay, Berry Islands
Well to those of you who are familar with the sailing life know that even the best laid plans do not always happen exactly as you expect them to. We left Bimini Sunday morning at 10am planning to anchor on Mackie Shoals overnight and then make for Frazer's Hog Cay on Monday. All the weather sites seemed to agree, we were expecting 10 knots of wind from the south. Not so!
We got to Mackie Shoals around 3pm and it was waaay too rough to anchor there overnight. Our engine also seemed to be acting a bit strange, we believe running on only 2 cylinders so we turned it off and decided to sail overnight to Great Harbour Cay, the direction that the wind was blowing (SE). I spelled Brian for about 2 hours so he could get something to eat and take a break.
At dark everything started out quite nicely, the wind died to maybe 5 knots, it was so light we watched a movie in the cockpit and around 9:30pm I attempted to get a little sleep.
I woke up around 2am and we were rocking and rolling. The wind was almost due east and were blowing 15 knots and gusting and fluky from the S and E. Being on the Bahamas bank, the chop kicked up and the seas were maybe 5 feet. More than we normally like that's for sure!
We finally made it outside of Great Harbour Cay but because it was dark we could not attempt to go in until daybreak. We had to anchor in pitching seas which always sucks, but hey, smashing your boat into the rocks is a bad day. We actually slept for a little bit which is pretty amazing since we were pretty much on a see saw.
Anyway, finally at about 8am we pulled anchor and went into a narrow cut in the rocks into Great Harbour Marina, which is a nice and peaceful spot. We are planning to stay 2 nights and have a diesel mechanic listen to our engine and see if we can determine what is up. We aren't too worried about it anyway because really we only need the engine to get in and out of anchorages so if it can limp along we will go wherever the wind takes us. We also have our 15 hp outboard that we use on the dinghy that we can mount on the back of the boat and do like we did on Sponge.... ugh! It makes us mobile anyway.
This chicky is exhausted so no pictures tonight!!
Fair winds, Nicole and the crew
We got to Mackie Shoals around 3pm and it was waaay too rough to anchor there overnight. Our engine also seemed to be acting a bit strange, we believe running on only 2 cylinders so we turned it off and decided to sail overnight to Great Harbour Cay, the direction that the wind was blowing (SE). I spelled Brian for about 2 hours so he could get something to eat and take a break.
At dark everything started out quite nicely, the wind died to maybe 5 knots, it was so light we watched a movie in the cockpit and around 9:30pm I attempted to get a little sleep.
I woke up around 2am and we were rocking and rolling. The wind was almost due east and were blowing 15 knots and gusting and fluky from the S and E. Being on the Bahamas bank, the chop kicked up and the seas were maybe 5 feet. More than we normally like that's for sure!
We finally made it outside of Great Harbour Cay but because it was dark we could not attempt to go in until daybreak. We had to anchor in pitching seas which always sucks, but hey, smashing your boat into the rocks is a bad day. We actually slept for a little bit which is pretty amazing since we were pretty much on a see saw.
Anyway, finally at about 8am we pulled anchor and went into a narrow cut in the rocks into Great Harbour Marina, which is a nice and peaceful spot. We are planning to stay 2 nights and have a diesel mechanic listen to our engine and see if we can determine what is up. We aren't too worried about it anyway because really we only need the engine to get in and out of anchorages so if it can limp along we will go wherever the wind takes us. We also have our 15 hp outboard that we use on the dinghy that we can mount on the back of the boat and do like we did on Sponge.... ugh! It makes us mobile anyway.
This chicky is exhausted so no pictures tonight!!
Fair winds, Nicole and the crew
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Bimini
Wow this place is amazing! We love Bimini. Such a charming little town. We have been mostly at the beach and eating Bimini bread which is the most delicious sweet bread you have ever had. The beaches here are covered in sea glass. It's awesome because we collect seaglass. Tomorrow we head to the Berry Islands where internet is rumored to be $10/hour so you won't be hearing from the Starfish crew until we reach Nassau. Here are some pics to tide you over.
Until next time! Nicole and the crew
Until next time! Nicole and the crew
Sea glass... the beach is LITTERED with beautiful pieces!
Awesome wreck off the southern tip of Alice Town
50% of the crazy crew
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Welcome to the Bahamas!!!
Getting to Bimini
In a word, amazing.
The morning was fairly still and calm leaving Hurricane Harbor
We entered the gulf stream at about 8:30am and other than losing the use of our depth sounder at 275 feet (typical) it was uneventful. (Who needs a depth sounder over about 20 feet anyway?)
The gulf stream is around 2000-3000 feet deep and the water is the color of the deepest, prettiest sapphire that you could possibly imagine. There was almost no wind so the sails were of little use to us which kind of sucked because we didn’t have them to steady the boat when the 2-3 foot rollers were coming in from a south direction.
At around 2pm we were able to start seeing the buildings on Bimini. We had a bit of knuckle clenching moment coming into a 20 foot wide opening into South Bimini in a bit more seas that we would have liked but thanks to our wonderful captain, we weathered it just fine!
We cleared into the country and then it was welcome to the Bahamas Ontario Canada
We went to Alice Town this evening and now we are ready for bed (though I am going to score a shower that does not come out of a sunshower bag first!).
More at a later date! XO Nicole and the crazy crew
Approaching Bimini
Gulf Stream Blue!
Alice town!
Shrimpy and I
downtown Alice town
beach in Alice town
Sunset
Dex
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