DECEMBER 2, 2007 and five more pix

December 2, 2007

So far, have seen: flying fish, a ray, 1 tiny lobster, 1 tiny squid, brain coral, sea fans, sea cucumber, jellyfish, nurse sharks, crabs, a sailfish, dolphins (not mahi-mahi, but porpoises) swimming with our boat, and many, many conch and more conch shells than I could ever imagine existed thusfar on the planet.


Okey doke, here we are on our way down to the bottom of the Berry Islands, (another place in the Bahamas where the license plates are numbered, all less than about 500), and we anchored for the night, since it’s low tide, and dark. That after one of the most incredible sunsets ever. Except for the last 6 or so. They are amazing here, I guess because it’s the sunset over the sea, but the clouds do these weird things at that time, like light up fluorescent pink and orange, and even the vapor trails behind planes turn into a scorching, luminescent pink color for the length of them. It’s a trip and a half.

We were, and are, on our way to Nassau, to do a few things. Buy groceries, of course, buy water, of course, but probably bump up on some propane, since it’s $125 a cylinder to refill, and takes some considerable time, buy a Batelco phone, (Bahamas Telephone Company, of course), buy some chain for the anchor line to add to what we have, and other sundries and supplies. But while we’re there, we have something else to add to the list: the fridge took a shit. It was cooling everything to 60 degrees, while running nonstop. Not encouraging. It was destroying our batteries, so we pulled out what we had, threw it in a big bin tote thing, and will eat what we can in the next 12 hours, and then try to get the fridge fixed in Nassau. It was a red sky tonight (sailor’s delight), so we’re hoping for good weather, and we got a secondhand report from another dude on VHF, but other than that we have no firsthand weather info, so we are going to leave with a bit of caution. It’s 35 miles to Nassau. That’s the crime capital too (as many murders this year as Detroit, I think, and only four miles across). We have to lock the place up tight. I spose I’ll tote our huge filet knife, just to be sure.

I found out something about my skin. For the last week or so, it improved rash-wise, but got really dry. So I put moisturizer on it. Then it was still dry, so I slathered on more. By the handful, all over, several times a day for several days. And my skin just got drier, and scalier, until it got puffier than Sean Combs, and very, very reptilian. It was also kind of painful, and it would sting like hell, especially where my skin had started splitting, like where my joints were, like under my armpits. Super gross. So I kept adding more and more moisturizer. Good plan, right? Wrong. Turns out I was putting some kind of body wash WITH lotion on it, not lotion. Yeah, SOAP. I was putting soap all over myself and letting it sit, over, and over and over, without washing it off. “Hey honey, will you do my back again?” So that happened. Yeah, I know, I’m a genius. I grabbed this stuff in the supermarket, and it looks like a lotion bottle, and says “with moisturizers,” etc. Hey, I was thinking about more important things. Funny, once I had decided that’s what it was while walking quickly through the supermarket, my brain just wouldn’t consider anything else till I was reading the label one day out of boredom.

The bugs here are not nearly as bad as people said (cross my fingers). But they are tiny, barely visible, and bite HARD. When you got ‘em, you got ‘em.

I really dig this ukelele. They are easy to play and fun and sound great. Whatever you play sounds awesome. My kind of instrument. I’m digging the clarinet, but I don’t know much about how to maintain it (where and how to grease, etc.) and I’m afraid this saltwater environment is hard on it. It’s squeaking like a bastard half the time, and it’s only partly because I suck at playing it.

Something cool that happened in Great Harbour. The people there are the nicest in the world, or rather, are supposed to be, and I think I believe it. It started with us going in for water at the marina. Upon arrival, I asked this cat, who I now know to be named Shaggy, how much the water was. He said $.30 a gallon, and I should just let him know how much we used, on the honor system. I asked how much for a well for the night, and he said a buck a foot (so for our boat, $25) and I said we probably wouldn’t be staying. He said “aw, what the hell, no charge.” We could stay for FREE. Then he tells me where the free, unmetered water is. Then that night, this guy Ray we met caught all these wahoo at 400 feet deep, and gave us a steak. Then another. Then another. Till we had several bags of fresh fish. The most tender you’ve ever had. Several pounds of it. We’ve had it almost every meal since, including huge hunks of it as sushi. Wowee.

We heard there was a hardware in town, so we started to walk. A block along, we get picked up by these two ladies, Patty and Bonnie. They offer a ride to the hardware. We took it, and then we realized the part we needed to fix the grill (tap and die) was not to be had on this tiny island, so we decided we’d just stop at the nearest grocery. They insisted on waiting for us to return us after. But the stores wouldn’t take credit cards. So we had to get money. We made about three trips to places to try to get a check cashed, AFTER they had to take us back to the boat for our passports. Finally, the Post Office would, but there was an hour delay. They took us home, fed us chips, and then took us back. And THEN grocery shopping. We spent our $80 getting the smallest amount of food you can imagine, but hey, we were glad to have it. AND we had our water.

They dropped us off, and then Shaggy says to us we can stay a couple more nights if we like. Free water. Showers. Toilets. Hurrah!

Did our good fortune end there? No. The following day, Patty and John and Bonnie stop by to invite us to happy hour. We go, and they end up picking up our check, and we all go to their house and cook up wahoo, eat a salad, deviled eggs, cassava, vegetables, and vodka tonics. Then they sent us home with all the food in their fridge, because they were leaving in a day to fly back to Florida.

Oh yeah. And John gave me JB Weld to fix our broken grill part. COULD THESE PEOPLE BE ANY NICER?

Oh yeah. The lady in the post office cashed our check by depositing it into her bank account and giving us cash.

Amazing. Amazingly nice people. Big karmic debts we’re incurring here.

The JB Weld worked fine where the two brass threaded pieces were loose, but then there was a gas valve where plastic met brass that kept leaking. So for that, I made up some fiberglass resin compound, and coated the whole thing. And it still leaked. So I coated it again. And it still leaked. So I coated it two more times. And it stopped, but now would not let any gas pass by because the valve had to be able to open and close. So I sawed it in half, cut the gas hose, jammed the cut tube inside the hose and put a pipe clamp around it. Now it works fine, but practically takes flight from the flames shooting out if it’s up all the way. We’ll have to watch that.

Anyway, before we had a fridge and no stove, and now we have a stove and no fridge. Maybe we’ll get it fixed in Nassau. We’ll see.

Okay, Ruth has been crashed about an hour, and we have to get up and sail to Nassau in uncertain weather, to uncertain anchorages, and navigate through a lot tomorrow. I’m sayin’ GOODNIGHT.