We arrived in Nassau around 2 pm after an easy motor sail from Chub Cay. Ed had the mainsail up which helped a bit, but the light wind was on our nose the whole way.

Ed had to call the harbor master to get permission to enter because of potential cruise ship traffic.

We came in to the mouth of the harbor and made our way past 4 massive cruise ships, down the channel to our marina.

Peter the Greek dockmaster had been raved about in the cruisers’ reviews. He lived up to his reputation, handling 4 boats docking almost at the same time . He got us tied up securely, best we’ve seen.

Later we walked down to “The Poop Deck,” the boaters’ bar and grill, which later we decided should be renamed Liars’ Lair. At the bar we met two Englishmen, Tim and Paul. Tim lives on his boat and is a boat broker. Paul we are not sure about, he said he had a 300 ft yacht and his wife ran off with her gym instructor. Ed called him on it, but he swore it was true. We asked him why he would be talking to a couple of low class sailors like us, but he just laughed and told more tales.

Back at the boat, big Dave showed up with his canvas bag and joined us for a nightcap. We had met him when we docked. He’s the master captain for a guy that owns 5 yachts and he lives in Fort Lauderdale. He’s here delivering a boat I guess. He said his boss is a “Mister Magoo” whatever that means.

Dave told us he was a former linebacker with the 49ers, played with Joe Montana. Ed couldn’t believe it! But this guy definitely had the build of a linebacker.

Dave shared his peanuts and drank his concoction, sharing sports stories with Ed and playing his music. I figured his trusty canvas bag went with him everywhere. He told us he had 3 Super Bowl rings, one of which he gave to his mother.

Now isn’t that the sweetest thing?

PS. Happy birthday to my daughter Gracie! She is 27.

We entered Chub Cay harbor around noon yesterday after leaving Bimini early. Don’t know why it’s called that, it’s a cute little island that only has 35 residents.

It’s the stopping point on the Berry Islands between Bimini and Nassau, the best route for people like us headed to the Exumas.

We decided to anchor in front of the beach where a couple of other boats were, a picturesque area, a little unprotected but not an issue since the wind was calm.

We put swimsuits on and headed on the dinghy with Ziggy to the beach. She’s getting better but has a little trouble with her footing slipping. I need to find a little mat for her.

We walked over to see the Outsider folks we had talked to the previous day, Paul and Brenda from Ontario. Ed spent a little while picking Paul’s brain about our battery issues. He thinks we might have a couple of weak batteries. We checked a setting back on the boat and discovered that is the case.

We took a fun swim by the boat, Ed swam over the anchor with his goggles and snorkel. It was the first time we had been able to enjoy warm water. Then it was cocktail hour and cooking burgers on the grill.

In the haze of our buzz we decided the boat parts are like a toy closet in a horror movie, where all the toys come alive and plot against you while you sleep.

The first demon was the starboard engine that died in Florida. As he passed away the port engine decided he would give us a break and get us to Cocoa. He must have welcomed the help from the new sexy starboard engine and got distracted on the ocean, where he let an evil rubber ball overtake him. After that, they both plugged along fine till we left Fort Lauderdale. Then sweet Sally Starboard engine got her panties in a wad when that pesky seaweed caught on her. She stopped a few times to wait on us to fix it, she’s too young and stupid to do it herself.

After that the engines must have decided to work together as a team. So far so good, until entering the channel to cross over the Gulf Stream in the dark.

That’s when GPS quit on us several times and my spotlight led us past many unlit markers. GPS is not one to lightly give up though, and as we discovered now, it’s a faulty battery that’s the culprit. He is next to be “degraded and destroyed” when we arrive in Nassau, he will not bring us down.

The fresh water pumps (we have 2) have conspired and decided to let one take a rest. He may be corroded so it might not be intentional. And the sump pump for the shower is taking a rest, forcing us to use our solar showers outside for now when we anchor. Sump isn’t sumping.

Oh, and the depth finder quit on us crossing over at 469 feet, but Ed figured out she just gives up at those depths cause she can’t find the sea floor. And we know from the charts on the sea sometimes we are over 2700 feet. Ok, she gets a pass.

And Auto Annie, our auto helm, has been a solid partner as long as the seas are calm. Once the waves kick up she throws up her little steering hands and quits.

Yes, it’s a fact, Toucan’s innards all get together at night and decide who will throw us the next monkey wrench. However we are gaining in experience and understanding of their mysterious ways.

We may be novices, but we don’t lack in determination. In a test of wills versus the boat gremlins, we will prevail!

We left Bimini yesterday morning after fueling up and headed for the wide open waters of the Great Bahamas Bank.  It is a huge body of water with channels to the Berry Islands, our next stop.

We motored all day on essentially glass-like waters, from 6-20 feet deep, easily seeing the bottom.  Huge starfish were everywhere but little other sea life.

It was a beautiful calm day.  Around 5 we started talking about anchorages.  No land in sight and 15 feet of water, we wanted to find shallower areas.

About sunset we spotted a small boat off to our right anchored out, only thing in the whole wide sea.

Maybe Captain Phillips the movie had unnecessarily scared us but just to be safe Ed got out his shotgun and brought it up to the cockpit.

“Tell me if you see that boat come in and follow behind us,” he said.

Whoa, that made me a little nervous.  We could see 3 guys on the boat with our binocs.  According to one of Ed’s sports commentators you see three or more men together it’s never a good thing.

But they stayed back and we put up the gun, unloaded of course.

By now we has decided to continue on  toward Chub Cay, which is about 35 miles north of Nassau.  But we couldn’t make that before midnight, so we decided to continue on in the dark til 9pm and anchor near the Northwest Channel marker.

As it turned out the marker was nonexistent, one source told us it was now just a post in the ground, submerged at high tide.

Yikes.  Ed started looking for shallower waters in the area and found an area north of the shipping routes where the Bahamian freighters travel.

He carefully guided the boat in pitch black and watched the depth finder steadily decrease to 12 ft.  Then he went up front and I steered til we got to 8ft and we dropped the hook.

The stars were beautiful, the water was calm, we could see the anchor on the bottom with our spotlight.

We had no idea what was around us.

In the morning we found out.  Nothing but open water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We spent the day in Bimini mostly waiting for a guy named E.J. who we hoped would check our GPS connection and the second water source pump.

He was referred to us by the people at the marina, the son of Nor (I think? sounds Norwegian but he’s Bahamian) who was supposed to be a good electrician.

We told them we would be back in the afternoon so Ed rented a golf cart for 2 hours and we took off to explore the island.

Up the road driving on the left what did we come to? A casino! And a very different upscale area with new condos galore on the beach.

But it wasn’t open yet. So Ed couldn’t use their sportsbook. I took a picture before they reminded me no pics.

On the way back we found a little crafts area and I went browsing the shops. Found a cute little dress.

I came out to find Ed talking to a lady by her car. He had noticed all the locals eat out of styrofoam containers and there were several people around her.

The Bahamas book had mentioned if you see people buying food out of a car go for it. Apparently Ed had picked up on that.

She saw Ziggy and said “no dogs I’m scared of dogs.” I moved Ziggy away while Ed did the food deal.

He got one baked chicken/macaroni/Bahamian rice/potato salad in a styrofoam container of course and it was delicious back on the boat. Nine bucks for a meal for two people – awesome!

Back at the boat, after lunch my energizer bunny Ed decided to get in the water and clean the props from seaweed from the Gulf. He didn’t stop there, cleaned the hulks, rudders and keel.

Of course I did nothing except watch for nurse sharks, none appeared. We did see a huge starfish though, hanging out in 9-foot ultra clear water.

We took turns staying at the boat the afternoon but our electrician never arrived.

We may leave anyway in the morning. With this great weather we can go down the Bahamas Banks and anchor anywhere.

We are here. It is a beautiful place.

We left No Name Harbor at 4 am in utter darkness. Ed lifted the anchor fairly easily and we made our way out to the channel.

I realized I needed the spotlight when Ed told me some of the markers were not lit. Uh oh. So I got it and went up to sit on the bow with the spotlight.

We passed several markers and another frigging BALL I spotted with the light before we got too close. I felt like I was on a drug-running vessel spotlighting the path ahead.

Then “Oh f…” Not words I wanted to hear.

“The GPS went out.” We were in the channel at night with no navigation.

I couldn’t leave my post or we would run into something so we kept on going, slowly.

Everything was turned off but the battery was low. The GPS came back shortly thereafter

We went through this exercise a couple more times before we finally started to see daybreak around 6:30 and the last channel marker.

We had made it to the ocean, now it was time for the infamous Gulf Stream.

You can tell when you get there because the water becomes a metallic blue. But it was fairly smooth, not much swell or waves.

Our GPS was holding now, we were getting solar and wind energy and the batteries were looking good.

We motor sailed all day and were almost out of the Gulf Stream when the starboard engine quit.

What? This was our new engine. Ed checked and saw seaweed on the motor. He cleaned it off.

The motor quit a couple more times. Then the last 2 hours were fine.

Ed thought later the intake might have gotten clogged, he will check that out.

We got to Blue Water Resort, using the latter word loosely, and pulled into the slip. This was Hemingway’s fishing haunt.

I had been looking for my shampoo all day from our outdoor solar shower the previous night.

Guess where it was? On the step leading down to the water on the stern. That bottle rode on the steps all the way across the Gulf Stream through waves and a couple of strong
wakes from other boats!

That’s what I call a miracle.

We went down the coast a ways to the jumping off point for the Bahamas, No Name Harbor in Key Biscayne.

Not sure why they couldn’t come up with a name for it?

It’s a very popular place for the locals, part of a state park, with harbor on one side and beach on the other.

We anchored in the morning and dinghied over to the park to walk the trails. A washer and dryer were available so we washed our clothes.

The nature trail took us a mile to the beach to check out the Lighthouse Cafe. On the way we saw lots of raccoons in the trees and manhandling the garbage cans. Ziggy went crazy on her leash, it was all I could do to hold her back. That little dog is strong when she goes into hunting mode!

Back at the boat we watched more and more boats arrive, most of them party boats with young people aboard. Expensive power boats, probably daddy’s money?

An entertaining afternoon with people dancing on their boat decks to Latin music.

We’re not in Kansas anymore…

Late in the day after looking at various weather sites we decided to jump off tomorrow and go to Bimini. Leaving at 4 am.

We woke up yesterday to the sounds of crew rowing all around us. Apparently there’s a rowing school here on the shores of the harbor and as it turns out we were here for their big monthly event.

They raced all morning long, and the sleek racing sailboats launched as well. When we dinghied ashore we learned the rowers were middle and high school kids. The parents were all watching, cooking on a big grill and drinking beer, not expending any energy while they watched the kids rowing their little hearts out.

We walked to Whiskey Joes to watch the UNC-Kentucky game. They got skunked.

Ziggy wasn’t too wild about the dinghy rides, she will have to get used to that if she wants to go ashore from an anchorage. I explained that to her.

Thai noodles on the boat and pretty sunset. Tomorrow we move to No Name Harbor, a jumping off point in Key Biscayne to prepare for crossing early Tuesday morning.

Not intentionally. But more later.

We took off from our slip in downtown Fort Lauderdale around 7 am and started down the river back to the waterway.

We approached the 17th Street Bridge, which was a 56′ bridge. Ed had measured our mast and down to the waterline and conservatively had estimated our clearance at 51′ at most.

But neither of us wanted to take a chance on the height, we asked for the bridge opening anyway, which was scheduled for 7:30 am.

The bridge tender came back and said it looked like we don’t need an opening, we can make it .

Nervous Nellie me, I watched the mast as we went under that bridge, scared to death our mast was going to crash into it.

But we cleared, and as Ed thanked the tender he said “Sure Captain, I was just trying to save you money, it’s a $10,000 fine for an unnecessary bridge opening.”

Whoa! That’s a shocker, we will remember that next time, we know we can do a 56′ bridge.

So we got out on the ocean with the sails, very calm seas, only a couple miles off the coast.

When the wind died, Ed went up to take the sail down. And I was at the helm with both motors going.

All of a sudden the speed died, I thought a motor had quit.

Ed came back and checked the port motor. It had stopped.

“Dammit, we are caught on a ball!”

“What?? A ball?” I was looking for Ziggys toy squeaky ball but it was on the boat.

It was a crab pot plastic float ball, caught on the prop with the line holding us stopped like an anchor, in 45+ deep seas.

Ed got the boat hook and tried to push the ball off.

No luck.

Then he made the decision.

“I’m going in.”

“What? You can’t do that, get the knife and cut the line.” I had no desire to have him in the water two miles out.

But he was adamant. “I have no choice, I have to get under there and get that ball off.” He headed down to put swim trunks on. Then he tied a line around him and to the boat and went in.

God please get us out of this, I was praying while he was working under there. I promised I would pray more often if He got us out of this.

“Kass move the boat forward.” I did that. Then, “Kass move the boat backward.” I did that too. Of course it was the other engine we were using, not the one he was working on, otherwise we would have run over my captain.

Finally he comes back up, saying we are clear, move forward. I did that and he started the engine that had been hung up.

Success! She started! We were back on our way with the f…ing plastic ball trailing away from us on the ocean ready to attack the next unsuspecting vessel.

The rest of the trip was thankfully un eventful, as we made our way to the Marine Stadium anchorage in view of the Miami skyline.

Oh, and we saw 4 or 5 more balls in our path before we got here.?? I sat on the bow to look for them as we came down the shoreline; we weren’t going to be victimized again.

Little bastards didn’t get us. So there!!

We already knew she was certifiable, a dog with crazy eyes and habits like trying to climb a tree after a squirrel and rolling in the grass every chance she gets.

But now she’s legal for the islands – checked by the vet here in Fort Lauderdale, rabies, shots and health certificated (is that a word?) and micro-chipped for good measure.

The microchip is now required in the islands, which I didn’t know. It’s not a tracking GPS signal:), just identifies me as her mama should she get lost.

And the Bahamas requires her certificate to be signed by a vet here within 48 hours of arriving there. That’s virtually impossible on a sailboat because it takes a day to cross and you have to have the right wind and weather conditions.

It looks like we might be able to go over early next week so that would make the certificate 7 days old. I figure it will be hard to make the 10 date into a 16 or 17 date (forged of course) so I might have to use the strategy the vet suggested.

“Oh just slip them a $20 and you will be good to go,” she smiled, holding out the palm of her hand.

Money talks in the Bahamas. And everywhere else I guess!

By the way I finished my 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle (bottom pic)!

We are headed out in the early morning on the ocean to an anchorage outside Miami called Marine Stadium. Supposed to be awesome views of the skyline.

After visiting Publix 2 blocks away for a few staples, I went over to the riverfront park for the monthly Jazz Brunch they have here.

There were two gazebos with great singers. Ladies of all varieties danced and swayed to the music. The park was filled with happy people drinking and dining on blankets.

There were as many dogs as people I think, and Ziggy got a Christmas corsage from the local Boxer rescue group…so cute.

We hit a couple of sports bars to watch the NFL games and UNC b-ball. The first was the Tilted Kilt, with all the servers in kilts. I told Ed he needs to do that, man-up as the Scotsman he is!
Not happening.

Then we went to the Original Fat Cats where puppies came into the bar so Ziggy could join us. The heels slaughtered ECU.

View out the back of the boat is awesome. Full moon adds an eerie feel.