I’m working on my boat in the prettiest place…….
Yes, I take time to get in the water here at Black Point “Castle” but today was a workday. Since the boat was standing on its keels in shallow water it was the perfect opportunity to change the shifter cable that was about to fail. The project meant that I needed to get under the bridge deck, undo brackets and open the plastic conduit that contains the shifter cable to the port hull. That is best done when you can stand on the bottom, not swim about trying to work overhead under the boat. The tide was out and the boat had settled into the sand about 6” so I actually had to work on my knees but the height worked nicely.
Most of the project was straight forward, but with any job there were challenges.
One bolt that holds the shift handle together was seized, I had to drill it out. After many trips to the tool box, under the boat, down to the garage, back on deck… under the boat and back…. I eventually got it done. The port engine now shifts like butter….. smooth and easy.
Another big project I’ve been mulling over is how to fix the floor in the dink. The wood floor in the bow had deteriated, Mark made a temporary fix so he could use the dinghy on the trip to Florida. I tried ordering a complete new floor from Achilles, but it would take longer than I had to get it, and it was about ½ the price of the whole boat! The plywood Mark cut worked out well actually, all I had to do is remove the aluminum connecting joint from the old floorboard and repurpose it a bit. Normally the deep side of the connector faced forward, I hammered it in place onto the existing floorboard, then pried the new board forward so that it locked into the aluminum channel. It worked great and the dink is ready for full service. The board is not treated so it won’t last forever, but it will undoubtedly make this trip.
Project wise that’s about it, I did some “rearranging” moving things around on the boat that we had just loaded on boat to get away from the dock. Linda has been nesting.. getting her boat like she wants it. Today we finally got the boat where we wouldn’t be totally embarrassed if we invited someone on board…. We had stuff stacked everywhere. The last thing will be scrubbing the floors in the salon. I’ve gone around the boat with cleaner and gotten the bumper marks and grease spots off the sides, there wasn’t much but there’s always the odd gunkiness on the white sides… she’s getting more presentable.
About 5 this evening the tide came back in and floated the boat. I moved us out past the second sandbar so we are floating again. There have been several boats in and out of our little piece of heaven. Right now I can see 4 other sailboats and two mega yachts. This has become a popular beach, much more known that when we were here last. There have been times when we didn’t see another boat… I guess the word got out. This truly is the best beach in the Bahamas.
Linda and I took a short dinghy tour this evening between projects. We took some nice photos of the area. When we get better service we’ll post a bunch of pictures. We may stay here again tomorrow and enjoy the water. Today we worked too much, tomorrow we might stay here and play in the water. I may pull out my RC sailboat and sail it around. It all depends on when we intend to leave for points south. Georgetown is only a one-day run from here if you go outside in the deep water. 50 miles is easy to do outside, it’s probably 65 weaving around thru the shallows on the West side of the Exuma Islands. I expect tomorrow afternoon we may knock off some of the miles and stage around Galliot or Rudder Cut. It makes the day to GT easier, you get there during the day rather than late in the evening if you take some of those miles off the day before.
For now, I’m happy in paradise…. It doesn’t get much better than castle beach at black point.
The last big project I need to do is bring the water maker to life. I need to flush it out and replace the primary filter. I may decide to do that here… but then I may not. We were having battery issues, they were needing to be charged every day. Yesterday I added about 48 ounces of water to the two batteries I can get to without a lot of rearranging. I have high hopes the batteries were just low on fluid. This morning when we woke up the batts weren’t drained like they usually are doing almost nothing during the night. Tomorrow if I have 12 volts or near it in the morning I’m digging out those back 2 batteries and repeat the process.. fill them up too.
The trip from Allen’s to here was impressive. We saw 20 knot winds quite a bit, initially waves were dead astern. By noon the winds had clocked from behind us to the port beam. It doesn’t get much better than dead astern waves with beam reach winds….. That worked great for a few hours until the waves began following the clocking wind. As you traverse the Exumas in a southerly direction, you heading goes from due south to SE. By the end of the day I was fairly tight on the wind with waves coming at 45 degrees on the bow. I saw a lot of 9 knot periods, some sustained 10 knot an a couple peaks at over 11. My moving average for the 42 mile trip was 7.9 knots. Most of the way the gps showed an 8 knot average, but the pinch and wave change the last hour or so dropped me to 7.9 still a very respectable all day run average. The new main seems to accelerate the boat to speed quickly, so it averages better than my old main. The quick acceleration helps me surf waves at lower speeds too so I’m pleased with its performance.
This house is why we coined this unnamed beach “Castle Beach” many years ago.
Sea Yawl Later!!