TOMORROW COME SOON

Our State of Affairs

JUNE 8-10, 2010 GREEN TURTLE AND MANJACK CAYS

Well, we never did get to post like we had hoped. We're in the out islands of the Bahamas, where it is always today, and maybe never tomorrow.

Going for a walk on Green Turtle in the early evening, we saw a sign on a house that said Donnie's Electrical, Plumbing, and Refrigeration. Sounded like just the guy we needed to diagnose our refrigerator problem.

Early the following morning we were back on Donnie's doorstep and managed to catch him before he left the house for other jobs. He said he was available to go right out to FLUKE to look at the refrigeration unit. Turns out Donnie is a local native, born in Nassau, but moved to GTC at a young age, where he graduated from the local island school. His two daughters are still on the island, employed at a couple of the local businesses. Plus, he is a local politician, saying he isn't like the others who only care about themselves or owe people a favor. Donnie just calls it like he sees it: a spade is a spade. He said some times, no one seems to like him, but all the townspeople come to him to complain about problems they want him to solve, and they vote for him. We genuinely liked him and were happy to employ a real native.

Donnie diagnosed our problem as being low on freon in the refrigerant lines, based on the pressure gauge measurements after it took a second trip back to shore (in our dinghy) to get another set of gauges. However, not being familiar with our keel-cooled system, he wasn't sure what the real pressure should be; too much would cause the lines to freeze, and too little wouldn't give us enough cooling capacity. Donnie suggested he call the company in Stuart, FL that installed the unit and ask them. That meant another trip back to shore. After four trips back and forth and a $60 payment the refrigerator was cooling properly again. We were happy, but since we didn't know what caused the freon to be low in the first place, we decided we should stick close to GTC for a few days to see if the freon leaked out quickly. We tested the line for leaks, but we may have missed the spot if it is in an area we can't access. Donnie told us to get with him again if we were still having problems.

Joe, the Horse, Trying to Make Friends

After we first found Donnie's house, we ran into Joe, the horse of New Plymouth. He has free reign of the community, but his favorite hangout is at the schoolyard where he gets the most handouts from the local children. He is the one who is most disappointed on holidays and summer vacation! Donnie said he can also be found in the shade of the sapodilla trees where he waits for the ripe fruit to drop so he can eat them to supplement his junk food addiction. I asked Donnie if Joe was ever used for any work, and Donnie laughed and told me “no, he be just a playboy”. Another local told me that Joe has recently been in a bit of trouble because he has figured out that many people carry loaves of bread on the golf carts used for island transportation, and leave them unattended. He helps himself to those easy pickings. We wondered if this sign kept Joe away!

Cheep Protection

The second evening after we met Joe, we went ashore again, this time to look for Joe and give him some carrot scraps left over from our dinner. I was carrying the bag of scraps heading up the crest of the hill, looking for Joe, when he just happened to be coming from the other side, at an intersecting angle. When he saw me holding a bag, and I held it up and said “Hey Joe, I have a treat for you”, his ears perked up, and he came clopping over PDQ to stand right in front of me nosing the bag. He kept trying to sniff Ursa, but she wasn't too social with him.

We continued our walk, enjoying some of the colorful and innovative architecture. These double doors, at the end of the short ramp from the street, are for the golf cart garage.

The Little Garage

The following morning, we motored a couple of miles over to Manjack Cay, previously known as WiFi land, where we hoped to be able to connect to the internet as in years past, courtesy of a lovely island couple who used to be cruisers themselves. Turns out they were asked by the local internet service provider to quit broadcasting their WiFi signal to the boats in the harbor because it was hampering sales to cruisers. Tomorrow come soon for posting!

We decided to take a morning walk on land over to the next cove. First, we ran into the island owner, Leslie, who gave us a tour of the “plantation”. We are always impressed with how many things they are able to grow, their chicken flock that supplies eggs, and how they live off the grid. Then we headed off for our walk.

An extended thunderstorm caught us on the trek. We ducked under some palm fronds in hopes of trying to keep the camera dry. It rained steady for over an hour. By the time we made it back to the dinghy, the tide had gone out to the point where the dinghy was too much out of the water for us to even move it. We would have to wait for 3 hours to get enough water to float the dinghy to get back to FLUKE! Plus, it was already past lunch time; tick tock, eat by the clock-what were we going to do?!

I went back up to the house to ask Leslie if we could borrow their kayak (it was on the beach) to take back to FLUKE until the tide came back up. Bill, her husband heard, and came out and said he had a solution to move us. He brought out 2 pieces of PVC pipe and said that we would put them under the dinghy and roll it to deeper water. It wasn't an easy job, but it worked, and we floated free. Island ingenuity!

Eddie and I went for a 3 hour “recreational” snorkel along the shore line of Crab Cay where there are the remnants of three wrecks . That means that we don't take our spears and we just look at the fish and habitat. We do practice phantom spearing, whereby we pretend we are holding a spear and sneak up on a fish, seeing how close we can get. Eddie always has the idea that he would be able to get all the fish he shadows, but it never turns out like that when we are really on the hunt.

When the tide was right, Wayne and I revisited the secret Sea Glass Beach. We weren't disappointed as we collected many pieces of varying sizes, shapes, and colors. Some of them were so small, just like jewelry store gems. I've placed a dime in part of the treasure pile so you can get a size perspective.

Sea Jewels

We invited Pete and Lil, from MERMAID LIL, a DeFever 49, over for grilled kielbasa. They had some interesting stories about cruising in Holland, Belgium, France, and Germany on a steel canal boat they own over there. They had left Vero Beach right behind us the same morning and traveled to Lake Worth, arriving right after us and then crossed over when we did. Too many seas to see and not enough time!