Wednesday January 26, 2011

I checked the weather sites this morning. There is no NOAA weather radio here in the Bahamas. Sailors in the United States use NOAA as their weather source. Sailors here in the Bahamas do not have access to the USA based resources. Sailors her in the Bahamas now use the Internet to figure out what the weather is going to do. There are lots of websites that are very helpful. The Bahamas government has a Meteorological website. There is also a site that is called Barometer Bob’s. Then of course there is windfinder.com. Today all of these sites agree. Tomorrow’s weather should be good enough to toss off the dock lines and head for Great Sale Key. Great Sale Key is about 50 miles from here and should be about an eight or nine hour sail. Once we get to Great Sale Key there will be no Internet.

All of the sailors weathered in here at Old Bahama Bay are getting anxious to get moving. The weather has kept us here too long. Tomorrow there will be several boats heading for Great Sale Key. Today everyone is making final preparations for the trip. Since we have been at Old Bahamas Bay for such a long time an ad hoc community of sailors has developed. This ad hoc community has come together and decided to use the “buddy boat” system. There are three buddy boats on this trip up to Great Sale Key.

Passages is a 36 foot Benateua. On Board are Captain Lee and Janice Bowring. These sailors are from Harbor Beach, Michigan, a beautiful resort community and safe harbor on Lake Huron. Lee is a retired Chrysler manager. Janice is still working as a cleaning lady for a summer resort in Harbor Beach.

Last and with the most Abacos sailing experience is the FinnIrish a 36 foot Catalina with Jim and Ellie Wetzel. This is their third year cruising the Bahamas. They live aboard their boat FinnIrish. Ellie keeps extremely accurate records. She says that if we leave by 8 AM we will arrive at Great Sale Key about 4PM. This of course from here log book. They have done this trip twice in the past two years. Ellie us the perfect fist mate. She has lists of everything on board the FinnIrish. She was saying last night at dinner that she has a 30 day supply of food on board and could stretch it longer if necessary by rationing.

There are not many bugs at this marina. Then this morning a fly found its way into the cabin, I now have a pet fly. I think this fly came aboard about 4 days ago. I have tried to catch it everyday. It is faster than me and is able to escape my ill fated attempts to capture and kill it. Today my pet fly found a girl friend. So I guess that I better come up with a name for them or chase them ashore.

I rode a courtesy bike into the Village of West End to pick up a few supplies. I figure that there is enough food and water on board for about 10 days. That is a conservative number assuming that we are not able to catch any fish. We are only planning on being out at anchor 2 nights so there should be plenty of time to fish.

I have really learned to love the native peoples of West End. They are super poor and super friendly. Everyone waves or toots their horn as a way of saying heymon,

The winds were pretty stiff this afternoon. The bigger boats that are traveling tomorrow needed to top off their fuel tanks. In stead of untying the boats so that they could float 100 feet across to the other side of the marina, I borrowed a “dock dolly” from the marina. Lee, Jim and me all put the empty fuel cans into the made by Rubbermaid buggy and wheeled them over to the gas dock. The marina is shaped like a “U”. We had to walk from the top of the “U” to the other top of the “U”. I ran back to the boat to get the camera to document this activity. On the way back to the boat this guy in a very nice power boat, that has been tied up next to the sea wall, got out of his boat and asked me if I had ever bought anything in the village. He said that his wife saw me with a plastic bag the other day and wondered where I was buying the groceries. I told them that I got the groceries in the village of West End. The sailor introduced himself as Bill. He asked me if I would buy him some bananas and fruit when I went into town. I told him that the bananas were lovely and it would be a pleasure. I should have enough fuel to make it all the way to the Sea of Abaco, but just to be on the safe side (of stupid) ten more gallons of gas were taken aboard.


Of course when I got to town the village market has sold out of bananas. I looked all over West End for bananas. After visiting every store in the village, I bought oranges, apples and a potatoe. I had to tell Bill that there were no bananas in town today.
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