It’s 8:30 in the morning now, SUN! the sun popped out here at Chubs. Hopefully my solar panels will enjoy it; last night we used a lot of power so the batteries need a bump. I didn’t expect to see much sun today so this is a treat. Water color over the sandy white bottom absolutely lights up your eyes in full sun. Jono is still sleeping, nothing to get up early for this morning, it’s nice to enjoy a lazy day. I got up at 6:30 to listen to Chris so I could discuss the weather forecast with Mike.
Yesterday I declared war on rust spots. Languishing in Louisiana SYL drooled a little…. sitting largely unattended while I worked so many hours she made a few rust spots. I put in a couple hours yesterday and I may try to finish that clean up today. It’s nice to work on improvements rather than necessary repairs. I have some new lines I need to finish as well. The ends of the lines fray unless you whip them with twine or manage some other finish. I’m going to try Ted’s trick of using electrical shrink sleeves then cutting the line straight and clean. I think I’ll like that result.
There goes a big yacht towing his 30’ dinghy. He’s passing Chubs now heading for points South. That boat is a Tiger Woods / rock star sized ship. I often wonder how people do that.. who’s on that huge boat and how that all came about. I’m quite happy with my little tub, but man…. there are so many big boats around I never imagined there were that many rich folks out there. I guess it resets the bar to see that much fiberglass floating around. OK, he’s coming back by the entrance the opposite direction; Chubs must have offered him a slip for under $1,000/day. You can’t pass up a bargain like that, right? Last night a ship almost that big anchored right in the entry channel, maybe that’s why he didn’t head right in. Maybe I’ll get to meet Kenny Chesney after all… lol. Nope, the flag on “Amarula Sun” is not American, it’s Jamaican.
9:00 and the sun is still out, what a bonus. Jono took the dinghy into the harbor. I think he’s dumping trash and getting the wifi passwords.
11:30 – With the wind change we swung out too close to the harbor channel so I anchored up further into the cove while Jono was away. While on the foredeck hooking up the anchor bridle I found a whole patch of new rust! When I cut the old crusty lock off yesterday, apparently some grind filings got away from me (thought I had them contained) so I just finished scrubbing that off. One step forward and two steps back….
We are still getting some intermittent sun; we gained .3 volts in the batteries from our solar panels so far today. I normally operate between 12 and 12.9 volts so adding .3 is a good bump.
I’m starting to feel my weight loss, I always lose weight being active here on the boat, but with Jono on board all the heavy lifting is done for me so I’m not as active as voyages past. I suspect I’ll still lose weight but not as rapidly as before. It would be nice to drop 20 or 30# this trip. In the past I’ve dropped 45, but that was over 6 months. I haven’t shaved since I left so I’m getting pretty wooly.
I think I see a little gray sneaking in there, oh yeah… a lot of gray….. I gotta go for that windswept captain look out here you know… Jono’s styling prowess has me thinking “boat theme”. Linda gave me a close hair cut before leaving so I’m OK there, but I have this sea captain thing going on right now with nobody to please but myself. Actually I dislike sleeping with a beard and won’t keep it… but a salty sailor needs to look the part.
Chubs has wifi, and we have the passwords but we must be out too far from the source to hook up so I still can’t publish. When I finally get to wifi I’ll have weeks to upload. I can’t even get google to come up much less upload text or photos.
4PM: I took the dink in to plan tomorrow’s trip with Jumanji, as I was pulling out of the harbor I ran into “Forever Young” as they came in to dock. Richard and Laurie have a 78 foot Hatteras that may be the best example of the brand on the water. We met them at “Pirate Beach” at Big Majors a few years ago. They will be at Big Majors when we go thru there, that’s a huge plus for the Seawind flotilla. Hopefully we can all go aboard the awesome motor yacht “Forever Young”. They took a slip opposite Jumanji, I helped them tie up.
Jono is baking some breaded fish fillets and corn for dinner. It smells fantastic. Tomorrow our plan is to run the 120 to 140’ depth profile around the berry islands and see if we can pick up some fresh meat! This will be one of the best opportunies to catch fish on the trip. Unfortunately we lost a great hookup as we entered the NW channel yesterday. I wasn’t prepared to turn into the wind and reel in a fish when the reel started singing, I was focused on transit rather than dinner. When the fish hit I didn’t round up so we lost what could have been our first big catch.
Winds are laying now.. it’s almost 5PM. I have high hopes that tomorrow’s sail will be one of those 10% days… Laurie and Mike need one of those. WOW the dinner Jono put out is reminiscent of one of Linda’s meals. It’s not a one dish dinner like I make, it has great flavor and smells as good as it taste. Fish, corn and buttered bread!
Jono has all the best lures tied on the fishing rods for tomorrow. We are super hopeful we get something to fry up between SYL and Jumanji when we hit Nassau. We checked our fish fry stock and we are all good.
Sea Yawl Later !! Jono and Rusty