Manjack and Green Turtle Cays: too hot to handle

June 12-15, 2010

Pretty in Pink

Judging by the title you should wonder why we are still in this area at the dates posted. Well, we might have an addiction to freon, and we didn't want to get too far away from Donnie and his gas. After 5 days of reasonable cooling our hopes were dashed as the refer temp began to creep up. Two more days, and we decided to go find Donnie again and get another fix. The problem is serious enough to generate a conversation about having to return to the states. It has certainly affected our plans to be able to get far from civilization.

We motored back over to Green Turtle and dropped the hook right before midday. Thinking Donnie would be at his house for lunch, we headed in and walked down the street. The school kids were out for lunch, and they were making fun of Ursa, commenting that she really didn't look like any dog they were used to seeing. I asked them if she looked like a pig, and they said yes, and one little girl said she should be called a hog dog.

Donnie wasn't home, so we went back to FLUKE, had lunch, and then went back into town to look for Donnie again. We left a note on his door, and decided to walk around town in hopes of running into him. We spotted him driving his white van and accosted him as he was motoring by on the main road along the waterfront. We told him our predicament, and he agreed to go out to the boat right away.

In addition to the gas and gauges, he also brought his leak detection device. W & E Refer Inc. had already soaped down all the lines and fittings and had been unable to detect a leak, but we figured Donnie may have better luck with his detection device. Our freon pressure wasn't as low as his first visit, but it was still below the norm, so that means we must be leaking from somewhere. Donnie and Wayne checked everything and couldn't find a leak. Wayne told Donnie that we wanted to stay over here, but we couldn't if we had to visit him every week for a freon fix. Donnie suggested that we try to purchase a small can of R134a gas in the Marsh Harbor area, the hub of the Abacos, and its largest “city”, a day's FLUKE ride from GTC. Donnie didn't want to be paid anything for his services that afternoon, pleasing Wayne to no end. However, I yelled to Wayne “that man has to be paid something for his work”, so we gave him $20, and then we were all happy.

Out to sea we headed, and that's where I'm writing this update.

We could have taken an “inside” route, but it has been so hot, we decided to head offshore where we hoped that it would be cooler, and we could get some trolling done and maybe get some decent fish. The inside shallow waters have been in the upper 80's, so we thought that was also putting a strain on the refrigerator system. The cooler ocean waters could give it a break, and ended up dropping the temperature another 3 degrees, down to 40, a number we could be happy with. The question will be how long we will be able to keep it that low.

As far as our fishing luck would have it, we didn't fare well. One hit bit through the leader line, another two came off before we even got them close to the boat, and only 1/3 of the yellow fin tuna we hooked made it back to the boat; something else bit off the other 2/3! That was for 7 hours of fishing. Good thing we weren't depending on getting anything for dinner.

Getting the Weapons Ready

Jacquelyn Cousteau and Lloyd Bridges haven't been doing much better with their spearfishing endeavors. Decent spearable fish are few and far between in the GTC and MJC areas because the near shore reefs are close to human population centers and have been over fished. We have been out hunting a couple of times and did have some fun. I speared a strawberry grouper that made a nice lunch for us. The following day, Eddie speared a 9 pound black margate that merits its own story, and it is just another example of how we certainly don't know everything about this cruising life and that sometimes we ought to be called the Three Sea Stooges.

I saw Eddie stealthily creep up on the loner margate since I had spotted it too and was going to take a shot at it myself. Eddie shot at it, but it wasn't a solid hit, and the fish swam off, going a bit deeper, under a small ledge. Eddie still had his eye on it, and continued on after it. I was already “nervous” about the situation since the fish was wounded, and the neighborhood was beginning to come alive. I knew it wouldn't be long before a shark or barracuda showed up in hopes of getting an easy meal. So, I took a position where I could watch the action and make sure we were all going to be as safe as possible. Eddie shot the fish again, and the spear penetrated solidly enough for Eddie to try to get it up to the surface. Eddie was already struggling with the weight of the fish on the spear, and his flipper started coming off his foot (he likens it to having a broken prop!). He couldn't get the fish out of the water and both of them were flopping around just advertising themselves as being stressed to the whole reef. I yelled for Wayne to give us a pick up and swam over and grabbed the spear and fish away from Eddie so that I could get the fish out of the water. To hold it vertical, to get maximum height, I could not keep my head out of the water because the fish was weighing me down, so I had to just stay below the surface and breathe through my snorkel. At least I could look around for predators approaching, at which point I would have just given up the fish. Wayne came quickly and “saved” the 3 of us.

The trouble with the fish didn't end in the dinghy. Part 2 came when it was time to clean the thing. Its scales were so thick and large Eddie had a difficult time scraping them off so he could get to where he could cut the skin and make a fillet. Scales went flying everywhere, sticking to the cockpit walls and furniture. Most of them were the size of nickels, so they were at least easy to wipe off and pile up to throw overboard (however, it was another two days before we were able to get the rest of them out of the deck drain). Eddie nicked the colon, so fish poop was leaking out during the cleaning process, and boy, did it ever smell bad! I had to give Eddie credit for doing a fine job filleting the fish and just sticking with the whole mess.

Part 3 came when it was time to cook it. The meat certainly looked OK, and I marinated it with some grill spices that we had used on fish before. Eddie, a.k.a., the Grillmaster, put the fillets on the grill. My first thought that something wasn't quite right was when I peeked at the grilling fish and noticed that the fillets were curling up an awful lot. Eddie asked me to check to see if they were done enough, and when I tried to flake open the fish, it was like sticking the knife into a wad of rubber.

OK, so maybe it was going to be a little chewy, we could handle that.

Part 4 began when the grilled fish was served. It looked fine, was definitely chewy, but tasted absolutely wretched. It made me think I had marinated it in iodine. I swallowed a piece and said that it tasted awful and I wasn't eating any more. Eddie and Wayne promptly spit theirs out, because they think if I ever say something tastes bad it could mean that we will die from eating it (I hate to waste food!). Both of them looked at me and asked if we were going to be sick. I said I doubted it, and as time has since passed, we didn't suffer any physical maladies, just bruised egos.

Part 5, the happy ending, was seeing the whole plate of fillets get tossed overboard!! Maybe something got to make a meal of it.

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!

2010 OUT ISLANDS, BAHAMAS: ABACOS

Welcome Aboard

June 7, 2010 Green Turtle Cay

This afternoon has been declared a “free” time for all aboard. That means that you can pretty much do whatever you want to do until someone else decides they need you to “help” them do something else. Then there is no freedom left, taken away in a moment's notice! How can any of us complain though, since here we are, living the exciting life of cruising.

It's been suggested that I use my free time to start the new blog postings for this year's voyage. Is that really any free time for me? I might as well get going before I get further behind and then less motivated. I'm just hoping that the thermometer visible to my left doesn't turn over one more degree to 90 degrees; I just feel hotter than ever when the first number is a nine. I have a spritzer bottle by my side that I use to squirt water on my head and down the front of my shirt to try to keep cooler. OK, I'm in the groove now (until the lightning starts), and here's what we've been up to.

We were finally able to sell our house (and FLUKE's docking space!). We had a lot of work to do to be able to move out of the house before our Mar. 31 closing. We rented a POD and put it in the driveway a month ahead of closing time so that we could take our time packing things from the house and putting it in the POD at our convenience. That went very well and was economical.

Not fully willing to give up our land legs, and needing a place to keep all our stuff, we took advantage of the same recessed real estate market that cut our original selling (asking) price by 40% and bought a small home (half the size) about a mile from where we had been living and a block away from where we lived before we bought the waterfront home. So, we knew the neighborhood well and bought a little, lock and go barrier island home on a lot with beautiful oak trees. We feel it was a good value and a reasonable use for some of the money we got out of selling the big house.

Our New Crib

Since the new house isn't on the water, it necessitated that we move FLUKE to the Vero Beach City Marina, about a half mile away. Being pressed for time, we never bothered to move off of FLUKE or open most of the packed boxes at the new house. It was our first time living aboard at a dock for an extended period of time, and an odd feeling having a home we haven't slept in.

Wayne spent a lot of time researching and designing a solar panel arrangement (4 - 210 Watt panels) for the pilothouse roof. Then, he had to find the best place to purchase all the parts since it is quite an expensive venture ($4000) and prices are varied for the same stuff depending on where you can get it. He and Eddie did the installation, probably better than if we had contracted it out. We are hoping to be able to generate up to 60 Amps into the batteries when the sun is at its peak. That will help reduce the amount of generator running time we need to charge the batteries. Each panel measures about 3' x 5'. The picture shows the two on the starboard side and there are 2 more on the port side. We also had to move the satellite TV antenna further forward to get it out of the way.

Living Off the Grid

Speaking of batteries, we had to replace all 8 of our house bank batteries. They weigh 125 pounds each, so moving the 1000 pounds of old lead off and new lead back on the boat was also quite a project. It is not an easy feat to lift a battery out of the lower machinery room to the middle deck. E & W rigged a pulley system to help lift them out from below decks.

Labeling is Important

When we were up on the locks in the Erie Canal we noticed that we had a small discharge of what looked like a petroleum product in our exhaust water. By the time we were at the home dock, it had worsened. W & E assumed it was a diesel fuel leak. However, when the engine was started and we took out FLUKE one day it was apparent that what they thought it was, really wasn't it. I had been harping (I'm good at that) to capture some of the discharge and make sure what it was, but the guys just thought they knew it had to be diesel. When Eddie finally got some of the stuff on a rag, it turned out to be oily, not diesel. Further investigation showed that we had a hydraulic oil leak in the heat exchanger for the system that runs FLUKE's bow thruster and stabilizers. That was a big project to pull the thing out and replace it with a new one and flush the system several times to make sure all the water was out of it.

Another big project, and the reason for our late departure to the Islands this year, was the purchase and installation of our new reverse osmosis watermaker. We had been talking about getting one for 4 years and said when we sold the house and had some extra money we would get one, so that time had finally come. Lots of research on what other cruisers had and liked, visits to boat shows, and just getting a good education about what would work best for us took a lot of time. It is a major purchase ($10K), so we needed to make sure we understood what we wanted and were getting. We finally decided on a 12 volt, 300 gallon/day Spectra Catalina system. It would enable us to make water without having to run the generator (like when we are underway), be quiet (the AC powered ones are noisy), and give us enough water to supplement our 500 gallon water tanks without having to have the added expense of a larger unit. We will still be frugal with our water use, but we will not have to worry about hoping to capture rain water or find some place to buy water. Down island, in the Caribbean, it can be difficult to even find a place to buy water. We have found that to be true in the Bahamas too, so now we will be even more independent.

Every Drop Counts

Over the last several months subsequent to our arrival back in Vero I was lucky to be able to go back to work part-time at the University of Florida's Florida Medical Entomology Lab. FMEL is a great place for me to work: there are a variety of projects to work on, so that my days are varied and interesting whether it be working in a lab or in the field; I get to work with different types of people from the professors to graduate students and everyone has something to say about the work or life's happenings; I like to be able to earn some money; there are no fashion police; and going to work gives me an opportunity to get away from my crew mates. From my perspective, the only negative to the last one is that it seems like when I'm not around the guys' levels of productivity are not at their maximums. When I get home I always expect more progress to have occurred than what does. Wayne says it's because I have unrealistic expectations on how long some of the work should take. Sure.

So now here is the real time, current (according to island time) cruising news.

After moving FLUKE off the dock and out to a mooring for a week (to test our new systems and repairs), we dropped off the mooring ball at 0600 on June 4 to head down to Ft. Pierce inlet, out into the Atlantic and then down to Lake Worth inlet, about 70 miles. Heading south like that instead of directly east over to the Bahamas would enable us to make sure we were running well while still within reach of land if we had a problem, and leaving out of Lake Worth would give us a more favorable angle to cross the Gulf Stream current that pushes northerly. Seas were only 1-2', but there was a constant choppy swell from the port bow side, so it was too rolly to be comfortable. Visitor threw up, and Eddie wasn't in a good sea state for most of the day either. Makes for a lon.....g day. To make matters even more boring, we were traveling close to shore (less than 3 miles out), to minimize the northerly current affect, so the water was only 50' deep at best, too shallow to fish.

Waters calmed as we got farther south, and we could enjoy watching some of the sights as we got closer to more populated areas. This two person colorful para-sailing rig caught my eye. If you've never done that yet, it should go on your list, because it is a lot of fun.

Parasailing Fun

The Lake Worth inlet is one of my favorites. It is so easy to navigate, day or night, and is just not cluttered. I am also amazed at what a great job they have done controlling sand erosion. They have this machine that moves sand building up on the north side over to the south side, so that it doesn't clog up the inlet and require dredging and doesn't take all the sand away from the south side beaches. That little machine has been there as long as I have ever seen the inlet, through all the storms and bad weather and just keeps on pumping.

Sand Pumper

At least we made it to the Lake Worth anchorage without incident. However, we had a huge oil slick around us as we were anchoring, making us think we had our problem back. Turns out the boat anchored up current from us, was having an oil problem and pumping oil over with its bilge water. We heard people talking about it when they came back to the boat after we had anchored. 3 thunderstorms passed through, packing 40 KT winds, but we held steady.

The next day, June 5, we started the engine at 0530, had an easy anchor up and headed out the inlet for our Gulf Stream crossing. Conditions were benign, all aboard were happy. We only caught 3 small schoolie dolphin and 1 huge (20#) jack and released them all. No fresh fish for our first night in the Bahamas! The day always has at bright spot when you get the first glimpse of the color change of the water that separates the deep sapphire blue of the Gulf Stream from the multi-hued lighter blues, greens, and almost white waters of the shallow Bahama Banks. The picture is a sea rainbow.

At 5:25 p.m. we shut down the engine, having dropped the hook at Mangrove Cay. I always call it a spot of nothing in the middle of nowhere. Believe me, it is not what you would think of as an idyllic deserted island scene on a travel poster. The mangroves are barely above sea level and have never fully recovered from near annihilation from hurricanes so they still look brown and beat up. There's no white sandy beach, and even the surrounding shallow waters aren't very pretty, but at least they were cooler than the 91 degree air in the pilothouse.

We knew we had been getting poor fuel economy and couldn't wait to jump in and look under FLUKE and see how much growth we had accumulated from sitting idle at the dock. Wow, we couldn't believe how bad the barnacles were on the running gear and on the bottom of the keel. It was no surprise that the keel had growth since we had the grounding at Carolina Beach inlet and assumed we had scraped off the protective bottom paint. The surprise was how thick and large the barnacles were. Eddie and I got to work right away, Eddie cleaning off the prop, and I began cleaning the boot stripe at the water line. I had never seen it so dirty, and it even had some small barnacles that needed to be scraped off. We worked for a couple of hours, getting cooled off and working up an appetite. We had a favorite meal to celebrate our arrival in the Bahamas: taco salad and cold beer.

Chatting with another cruising boat we learned that it was a holiday weekend (Bahamas Labor Day), which meant that there was no hurry to try to get anywhere after we left Mangrove. We decided to travel most of the following day to Powell Cay where we could find some nice, shallow water with a fairly sandy bottom to give us good light to continue to work on cleaning the bottom of the boat.

We anchored off a rocky bluff area where a colony of tropic birds nest in the holes in the cliff. I always write about these beautiful, birds that circle through the air in the area of their nests trailing their long, graceful tails, so unique to these island birds. I think the tropic bird should be the national bird of the Bahamas, instead of some parrot that hardly anyone ever gets to see.

All three of us hopped into the water to cool off and work on the boat. Wayne reamed out the through hole for the sewer pump out because it had a lot of heavy growth and the breaker had popped when we were pumping out the holding tank at sea. He hopes that the pump out was impeded by the growth in the pump out line. It seems like we always have some problem with the sewer. We even had a problem with the sewer at the new house right before we left. Wayne plunged the toilet and up spewed a kid's blue toothbrush with a little red truck molded into the handle. Eddie said he didn't want it.

Eddie spent two hours underwater breathing with the compressed air line we operate from the engine room. He did a great job cleaning the running gear, keel, and other through hole areas. I finished up the entire boot stripe and began wiping some algae growth off the bottom. FLUKE will definitely need a new coat of bottom paint when we haul her out after we get back in August.

Eddie has finally realized one of his dreams to come true. He gets to take showers with the hose off the swim platform now that we have the watermaker. He combines that event with rinsing off our swimming and diving gear. I'm not sure what would be a “better” shot: him standing there in his birthing state or in his saggy underwear with the stains in various places.

Cleaning the Buff

My Powell Cay treat came at night when it was pitch black and I looked overboard. There were lots of bio-luminescent animals, mostly jellyfish, in the water emitting those silent, eerie blue-white flashes. Some were large enough to light up spots that reflected off the sandy bottom. When I dipped a black bucket into the water and swirled it, I got thousands of golden phosphorescent sparkles of light, like pixie dust drifting through the water. When I threw a full bucket of water overboard, the splash made a big ring of gold. It reminded me of how exciting it was as a kid to catch fire flies and have them glowing in a jar. Then we were awakened from midnight to 1 a.m. as a thunderstorm skirted the anchorage.

We slowly cruised over from Powell Cay this morning to clear customs at Green Turtle Cay before they took a midday break. It is apparent that they've had a good amount of rain since the vegetation is green, and the royal poinciana trees are fully ablaze. We even made some water while underway to test out the system. I got out of early helm duty because I said I wanted to make some chocolate chip cookies. The guys never mind taking over one of my shifts if I have a galley project like that to take care of. Some of the cookies were overcooked on the bottom, and I've had to endure the complaints about who has to eat those.

Royal Color

We launched our dinghy, and Wayne went ashore to clear us all in, since only the captain is permitted to walk on land until Customs says its OK. He came back with some big technological news. The Customs office had a copy machine and even a computer! That is a first for us. In past times we had to share carbon paper with each other to fill out our papers, and even having reliable electricity to run a computer was questionable. Wayne noticed that the screen saver on the computer was colorful autumn leaves, and he remarked to the woman that many people in the states have screen savers with enchanted island scenes. Everyone, everywhere, always wants to be somewhere else!

We may have one bad problem. Our refrigerator is not cooling as low as it should be. We have cleaned off the keel coolers and defrosted. It is packed and maybe the air circulation is poor, but we are going to have to do something about it, even if it means getting someone aboard to check the refrigerant level. It is very frustrating to try to trouble shoot this problem ourselves. The freezer, which works on the same principles is working fine, but we need a properly cooling refrigerator to have this cruise work right.

Well, the thermometer has held at the 89 degrees, my spritzer bottle is almost empty (I shared it with Ursa), and my free time is up because it is almost time to prepare the next meal.

We're optimistic in being able to get a connection to post this, maybe tomorrow.

(As you can see, we didn't get the connection we hoped for, finally signed up today Jun 18)