Where did my day go?

Where did my day go? I used to wonder what people without jobs did all day, now I think I can answer that myself...

I wake up usually around 8:00AM and check my phone, this means that I check my various email accounts and ongoing text message conversations.  After that, I'll invest some time playing a video game on my phone as well.  Soon thereafter, hunger or thirst will strike, at which point I'll clumsily manage to crawl out of this coffin of a bed called a V-berth.  Depending on my energy level, I will either cook some sort of breakfast, or prepare some cereal.  After I'm done, I'll observe the growing pile of dirty dishes and cringe.  However, I'll usually determine that I'll wash dishes later at a "better time" (as if there was such a thing).  I may spend a few minutes organizing the boat, then I'll gather up all the necessary items for taking a shower and brushing my teeth.  As soon as I'm ready to take a shower, the familiar tingling in my lower abdomen comes knocking to inform me of a late appointment with the restroom.  I'll then put my toothbrush, towel, etc back on the boat and head over to the gas station to use their "head".  I patiently get in line at the gas station until I get to the attendant which I politely ask to open the restroom for me.  Sometimes the restroom will be occupied and I'll have to wait in a light panic for it to be vacated.  I use the restroom while playing video games on my phone and then come back to the boat to get my stuff so I can take my shower.

My showers here consist of standing on the dock in my boardshorts while using a hose to pour water over myself... I like to check out the expression in people's faces while they see me taking a shower on the dock in plain view.

At some point between the restroom and the shower, friends from nearby boats show up to use the internet at the gas station, so after my shower I'll walk up there to determine what to do for the rest of the day.  We chat for a bit and we realize that it is about noon! We usually start to slowly walk towards downtown which is about two good miles west.  On the way there, I'll figure that it must be 5:00PM somewhere, so it might as well be right here! So I'll purchase a cold refreshing Kalik to make the long walk bearable. 

Once we get to downtown, we'll find a public space with some shade and spend some time discussing upcoming passages, cruising plans, the weather, travel, boats, etc.  Hunger will creep in and the conversation will start to focus on hunting down our next meal.  We will walk to different places until we find something suitable, then have lunch.  Later we might end up going to the public library and chill on its fresh and shaded wraparound balcony overlooking downtown Nassau and the harbor.  After a while there, the sun will have dropped significantly, and walking around town becomes more pleasurable.  So we might check out some sights and slowly make our way back to our boats while discussing dinner plans...

Norman's Cay to Nassau

I had dinner on Moonshadow last night, then I went to my rocky boat on the Sandy Point anchorage at Norman's... For those who may not know, Norman's Cay (or at least part of it) used to belong to Carlos Lehder, and it's airstrip was used to bring in tons of you-know-what...
You can read about it here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Lehder

Anyway, I woke up before sunrise, cooked some scrambled eggs with onions, tomatoes, spam, etc, pulled the dinghy engine onboard, and weighed anchor under sail... Again, as a purist might... I was ready to do the run to Nassau under sail only.  At some point halfway, the wind dropped, and so did my speed, so I had to start motorsailing at four knots...

After some time, the buildings in Paradise Island started breaching the hazy horizon and I was finally able to see my destination.  I had to swerve around a few coral heads along the Yellow Bank and Middle Ground area, but otherwise, I had the loyal autopilot engaged while I cooked, ate, and read.

I've been reading this book about Colombian drug dealers turned informant and it depicts Colombia's violence so graphically that it almost makes me wonder whether it is a good idea to move back, but I won't ever know unless I try.

I will be in Nassau a few days, and probably won't be updating this blog much until I leave...

Exumas

After 15 long days we finally left Nassau Harbour.  Nassau is a very nice place, and we had a good time, but we really wanted to move on.  We had a great time with Bill, Regina, and Matt from Meant 2B, and we met some other interesting characters along the way, but we needed go...

On Tuesday, Jan 5, we left Nassau in the morning around 8:30 and we anchored in the lee of Highbourne Cay around 4PM.  It was an awesome sail, at first, we were motorsailing since it was a bit to close to the wind to sail, but after some time, the wind shifted just enough for us to sail close-hauled engineless!  the wind was light, about 11-15 kts, and we were doing about 5+ kts! for some reason not normal to our boat, we were going faster than all the boats in our vicinity (about 4 boats, all of them longer) and we soon left them behind...

Some time after having anchored, Quiet Time anchored next to us, we had met one of the crew in Nassau so we hung out for some drinks on our boat.

Since the weather was holding up, the next morning we decided to weigh anchor and continue south towards Warderick Wells, we picked up a mooring there, and stayed for the night.

The next morning the weather was still cooperating so we decided to leave the mooring and head for Staniel Cay... we motorsailed most of the time given that the wind was on our nose and we needed to make long tacks... anyway, we anchored in Big Majors Spot, fed the pigs, explored the beach, went over to Staniel Cay, rescued a loose dinghy, etc... we might stay in this anchorage for a couple of days...

We also saw Moonshadow, a boat that we met in Key Biscayne, then in Bimini, and now in Big Majors Spot...

A front is expected to come through this weekend and the area around Staniel Cay and Big Majors Spot seems to offer a number of anchorages for the clocking winds, so we will see how long it takes us to check out of this spot...

By the way, the last couple of posts have been written from the boat at anchor while sharing the 3G data connection from my phone (thanks Olga!) with a hotspot application... if/when I get real WIFI, I will add a post with some videos...

Seas the Moment reaches Nassau

We spent about 5 nights at Chub Cay, two of them at the pricey marina, three of them anchored out in a couple of nearby spots.  There isn't much to do in that little island, so we did plenty of reading, walking, sleeping, etc...

I was a bit upset when I wrote my previous post about Chub Cay (and it shows in the tone and mood of my comments), but after a couple of days I finally understood why such an expensive place offers so little services to the cruising sailor.  In short, the project to renovate the whole club seems to have gone a bit bankrupt, and we don't represent their core business, so they don't cater to us much... we met some friendly and interesting people there, and we had a good time while doing nothing... we met a fisherman named Dave who sold us snappers for $1!!! We met a singlehander named Jerry who had small 27 footer and was just cruising on $500/month! We met another singlehander named Dave who was sailing a 31 foot catamaran and had done this trip about ten times already!  Anyway, there was not much to do in Chub Cay and we wanted to move on, so as soon as the weather cleared up, we weighed anchor and set course for Nassau.

Our trip to Nassau started rather eventful, our navigation lights did not work!  I was not going to head back just for that, so I managed to jury-rig some nav lights with some broken portable ones I had from a previous boat, a flashlight, and some duct tape!

The weather was calm and the light breeze was on the nose at first, but as the morning sun rose, the wind started shifting to the north just a bit (exactly the opposite of what the weather forecast mentioned) and I was able to motorsail most of the way to Nassau!

As soon as we reached Nassau we saw Dave from Miou (pronounced like the noise cats make) the catamaran, he had left after us, and passed us at night, having reached Nassau about an hour or two before us.  As soon as we saw Miou, we heard Spice hailing us on the VHF!  Dan (from Spice) had speculated that we should be reaching the harbor around that time and was trying to find out if we had arrived, he must be some sort of psychic.  We sailed into Nassau Harbor and right through the cruise ship docks into the Harbour View Marina where Spice and another boat we met in Bimini were staying.

We have been spending plenty of time walking around town, visiting some interesting spots, and procrastinating on boat projects... We will probably be staying for a week or so around here... then on to the Exumas.