Chicken but smart

It's windy here -- actually uncomfortably windy. It wears you down after 3 continuous days of 20+ kts winds. Now here in Hopetown we can still take the dinghy to town comfortably but still there is a lot of swinging motion when back on the boat.

Now the temps are very nice after the hot temps that greeted us a month ago. The nighttime lows are around 62 - 64 and the highs are 70 - 73 right now. This trend of temps and wind are to continue for another week so we need to just deal with it. However it is 1000% better than enduring the frigid temps and snow at home during this same period.

Today we are having the added inconvenience of small squalls passing through about every hour this morning thus why I'm writing the blog in the morning.

Now life is till not a continuous picnic here. There are chores to perform. like yesterday our main water tank was near empty so I decided to cart water from the marina in 3 - 6 gallon jerry cans in the dinghy. It was quite windy and I did not want to drop the mooring and take the big boat to the marina and dock to fill water and then have to go back and pickup the mooring again. The pickup can be difficult in strong winds. Well I made 6 trips for 108 gallons and it took better than 2 hours! Well what else was I going to do eh? to get dinner and then play.

Last night was Bingo night or as the locals call it JACKS because it's played at the restaurant called Jacks here in the harbour. It starts at 6pm and so we went at 5pm to get dinner and then play. Well didn't happen. At 5pm the place was packed and no tables were available. Darn -- next week we will go at 4:30pm. We still had a nice time though. We walked to 'Wine Down Sip Sip' and ordered one of their flat bread pizzas to go. It was delicious.


Yesterday I received a note from Hank Pomerantz of Carolina Yacht Care that gave the talk on all the trouble spots on the ICW between Beaufort, NC and Savannah Georgia when we stayed at Southport Marina. His information was great and he is trying to enhance the program for those coming down the ICW next fall.

I'm thinking I don't want to do that again. It was really tough this year -- maybe I should not bring the boat all the way home this year -- I know I know Blasphemy but still do I want to endure that again?

We have met several cruisers that all leave their boats in Florida and some actually leave their boats in the Bahamas just so they don't have to cross the Gulf Stream again. Most of those were Canadians on trawlers. They had all had very bad crossings of the Gulf Stream. One woman in fact told us that the conditions for her was so bad that she thought she was going to die. She decided to remove her life jacket so at least it would be quick! Now that is a very bad crossing.

I spoke to two trawler owners who leave their boats at Abaco Yacht Services in Black Sound on Green Turtle Cay and they said the storage fee for on the hard was less than $300 a month. They can leave the boats in the Bahamas for up to 3 years at no tax cost although after 3 years you have to import the boat and pay about one third the value of the boat, thus they take them out of the Bahamas then.

Something to consider to avoid the hassle of ICW and Gulf Stream crossings. Call me chicken.