s/v Virginia Lee

We are sailing from Long Island to south side of Exumas.  Using up the last of our Batelco data plan.  I am surprised there is coverage.

There was a race of the family island C class boats yesterday.  We are happy we stayed for that.  We are now making use of east winds to go west.  The wind is right on the stern, a challenging point of sail and a slow one. We will stop earlyish.  Our choice of anchorage is a tenth of a mile from the Tropic of Cancer.  I would like to go to the beach at exactly that latitude.  Dixi would too.

Sunsets on a Tayana 42... and on the current government

We casually observed politics and Tom (when waiting for Teri outside the markets) chatted with locals in these past four or five months.  We thought the current party, the Free National Movement, would win.  The election was May 7th.

Last week, Teri chased down a bit of election free floating election poster heading towards the water and the locals asked if she’d like to vote for him; jokingly, it could be arranged.  We didn’t make any public comments – we don’t even understand the issues.  But. In the news this last month, the (outgoing) prime minister opined that he was confident in the election outcome: he had more money in the campaign coffers.  Tom nicknamed Hubert Ingram “Hubris Ingram,” but only on the boat.  We acknowledge the locals who pointed to infrastructure improvements in the family islands over the years.  Eleuthera and Bimini have reverse osmosis water and the power systems needed to run that.  (Cat, Long, Rum and other more remote out islands do not. They still rely on rain water.) We don’t know how that was financed.  With Cuban oil being discussed, the Bahamian oil fields are in play.  It seems a major road project in Nassau, contracted to foreigners, has been mishandled horribly.

We don’t know the major positions of the two major parties, just their slogans: NFN (prior government = “We deliver”) and PLP (government as of today “The power of the people is greater than the people in power”).  I wonder if a foreigner plopped down in the US in September of our election year would be as mystified.

We are anchored in Salt Pond, 0.1 nm off of the channel that leads to the fuel dock, and farther than that from the goverment dock channel.

Last night about 10:30 Ocean Energy, a tanker, came in.  Knowing how hard it is to see boat anchor lights when shore lights are behind, Tom turned on the spreader lights.  I figured he saw us, since he was using his spot light, but his “white lights” were lined up and he was about 1/10th of a mile off our stern, so I hailed him on radio just to be sure.  He had seen us, was just “getting his bearings” and evidently he was out of the channel a bit.  Better safe than sorry; this boat is very solidly built, but nothing is solid enough to meet a tanker!  The local sailboat was more of an obstacle for the tanker than we were.

Tanker at the Fuel Dock

Dixi saw her first donkey today.  Tethered across from the Hardings grocery/general store, was a small donkey.  Good thing he was roped, because he was not intimidated by Dixi, and seemed ready to kick some ass .

Did some light provisioning , laundry and put on some diesel via jerry can. Chatted with some locals. The fast ferry came in around 2 pm , but could not make the dock due to low tide until after 3.  Will see what is new and fresh in the stores tomorrow.

The rains have finally stopped.  We had several days of light rains, and yesterday, a decent soaking. The decks had already had many rinses, and a sampling of the rain water on the deck was delicious, so we opened the deck filler, put the special purpose stoppers in place, and let it drizzle into the tank. I don’t think we collected all that much, it wasn’t a torrential downpour.  It was, however, enough rain to show we haven’t stopped the leak that travels from somewhere near the forepeak, down along the inside, along a teak accent strip, across a trim piece… where the drip falls in the v-berth just at the location of the small of my back.

We spent six days on the north end of the Salt Pond bight, “recovering” from Georgetown’s crowds (see below; those are anchored, not moored boats).  We met Suzanne and Bob on the only other boat we could see without binoculars (and would need that to see if they were in the cockpit).  They are confined by draft to being far from town, but have a super dinghy and offered a ride to town the first day we arrived. We didn’t need provisions and declined, but now, a trip to the grocery store would be good. So we moved over towards the government dock.

Boats at anchor in Georgetown, Exumas, as we left

We originally thought we’d go to town today, but on her morning walk, Dixi ripped a pawnail down to the quick.  As usual, I’ve bandaged her with first class treatment.  Best let it heal for a day before taking her to shore.

We were treated to a show… a fishing boat towing in two of the Family Island Regatta boats (and a couple of their own tenders).  They left the raft of the large and small sail boats on an anchor just off of us. The small one has its mast down, the last in the line below.  (We had been anchored on the far side of the islands shown behind the sailboat.)

Yes, its a good to leave going to town until tomorrow. How much more excitement can we handle in a day?  And did I mention a sugar ant is inside the large picture frame in the saloon?