Awakened to tears in my. Eyes!

Wednesday 03-092016

Our luck with marinas is holding but I'm beginning to worry.  The folks here at Pescaderia Marina are doing everything they can to make sure we enjoy our stay, including loaning us the owners truck for a quick trip to the store.  Maybe it had something to do with Sally wanting to buy toilet paper. 

 We ate at a restaurant next door and had a wonderful meal of grilled, fresh (caught that morning) mahi-mahi in a garlic, onion, butter and wine sauce, absolutely divine. The fresh seafood market here at the marina has fresh caught snapper, mahi-mahi, tuna, grouper and live lobster.  We walked to a bakery and then to a fresh fruit/veggie market that we couldn't find.  The bread we bought made up for no fresh fruit.

At dawn I was in never-never land catching tuna while sailing when Sally woke me and asked if I wanted to read something funny.  How could I not want to, so she handed me the iPad and I laughed till I cried.  One our fellow cruisers that we met in Long Island, Bahamas  but is 2 slips down from us now, wrote a blog about some of his experiences.  This dude is certifiable!  His childhood experiences were similar to mine except he was the one making siblings laugh  and I was always the one sent to his room for laughing at the dinner table.  His blog site is: latitude43.com.  and you should read everything on the site, including "who we are".  If you are too self centered and victorian to read a few curse words then you might not enjoy, if you have even a small sense of humor you will love it.

I included a few pics of street scenes around the marina.

PR at last . . . thank God almighty PR at last

March 4, 2016

Friday morning after getting up too early to see how to exit the marina, I decided to wait and start the engine at sunrise.  When I started it the alarm didn't stop buzzing so I stopped the engine and went below to find the problem.  My pretty, red almost new engine was now covered in oil.  I had changed the oil the night before and I didn't notice the new filter was defective.  When the engine started the filter blew off and I lost a gallon of oil on the engine and bilge.  I only had one quart of oil extra and one more filter, when I asked my neighbors for oil, Steve  reminded me of the the oil I removed at the change so reinstalled it.  Not good but on these islands you can't go to the corner auto zone to get more oil.  I will change again in PR.

As we were leaving the bay a couple of whales surfaced to send us off into a gorgeous morning.  We had a decent motorsail down to the Northeastern tip and then had to go out to avoid some large treacherous shoals called the hourglass, from their shape. The shoals are where the strong ocean current 5,000 ft deep run into rock cliffs 200 ft deep.  The effect is an ocean in turmoil. It was after 2000 hrs when we were skirting the north edge of it in 700 - 900 ft of water when I noticed a very large fishing boat on our course.  I tried to ease closer to the shoals the get south of him but he changed course too. Each time I turned even a few degrees the waves got much worse, breaking over the bow.  After about 30 minutes of this dance I turned due north and let the larger boat win.  It continued into the shoals and in his spot lights I could see a huge net trailing him so we went another mile out before turning southeast toward PR.

As we turned to head into Pasceveria Marina four of five more whales surfaced to greet us and a pod of porpoises dove under the bow but we too quick for me to get any pics of them.  One of the whales turned on its back and clapped flippers.  The marina was having a regatta and we had to motor through it, making sure not to interfere with the race.  The USCG helicopter did a flyover of the starting line.

pics  whales at Puerta Bahia, whales midway down D.R.,  whales in PR slapping fins,  regatta

whales....whales

Regatta at Cabo Rojo

drying the laundry at Bahia Mar  luxury hotel.yes really

Jerry's take on Nassau

            Early in January

We motorsailed to Nassau channel and arrived in rain/light fog and decided to anchor over close to Oprah's house.  We had winds up to 30 kts during the night (Georgetown clocked 105 kts and several boats damaged).  I left the chart plotter on through the night and by morning it looked like Salvidor Dali's ghost painted the screen!  

We went to town in the dinghy walked to the telephone company to buy a bahama chip.  The Tmobile service was fine for texting but for teathering the computer for wifi it is useless.  I didn't know to turn off all the apps in the background so I used 75 % of my data the first night.  I will not be able to send pictures with that card so Sally is starting a blog that will include all my emails, pictures along with her thoughts and comments.

From Nassau we motored across the yellow banks which is filled with shallow coral heads.  Sally did as all the guide books recommend and stood on the bow for a hour or so when we were crossing the most dangerous part.  The bad weather made most boats hunker down in Nassau so when the weather broke it looked like D Day on the English Channel, the water was filled with all types of boats from megayachts to 16' skiffs, motor & sail.  We always had a dozen boats in sight, each on a slightly different heading.  We made it to Normans Caye to anchor so I could give a Budwieser (I cheated him and used Bud Lite he will never forgive me) toast to Norman Gainey in Canton,MS, I believe the islands namesake.  I'm sure he had been here because there was a huge pile of crushed stone on the island