Wednesday February 2, 2011

Woke up early in March Harbor and watched the sun rise while drinking a cup of coffee. In the morning the boat is covered with dew. This is a good thing here in the Bahamas. Fresh water is a premium and business charge customers by the gallon. The going rate at the moment is $0.25 per gallon. Water is metered at the marinas so at the end of your stay you can be billed for usage. This means that washing the salt off your boat at the end of the day is much too expensive. So I use the dew and wipe the boat down to get the salt off. After all WaterMark is a freshwater boat. She is developing some rust on some of the fittings and I am trying to keep the rust to a minimum.

I then jumped into the dingy and went to the gas dock for some fuel. I purchased 6 gallons at $4.75 per gallon. I noticed that the Joe Motor on the dingy was loosing power. I hope that it is a temporary condition. The motor works, it just will not get the dingy up on plane like it did.

After fueling, I headed to a marina for a shower. Lee and Janet then joined me for a foot tour of Marsh Harbor. Marsh Harbor is the third largest city in the Bahamas after Nassea and Freeport.

Jim and Ellie did not join us for a the foot tour as they needed a day to rest. Jim is 67 and Ellie is about the same age.

After the tour of Marsh Harbor, we returned to the boats and set sail at 2PM for Man-O-War Cay. What a fantastic day on the water. I sailed all the way from Marsh Harbor to Man-O-War. I was able to make about 4.9 knots under sail pulling a dingy. This is the last Cay that we will be visiting with Lee and Janet as they will be heading north and back to Florida in the next several days. I’m staying in the area waiting Jerry Leanderson to join the crew.

We arrived at Man-O-War Cay at 4PM. The distance traveled was 7.3 miles. Lee got a slip for Passage. Jim and Ellie got a mooring ball, I turned in the opposite direction and motored to the end of the harbor and tossed out the anchor. I was keen to see if the new ground tackle would work. It worked well in Marsh Harbor, it seemed to work well here at Man-O-War.

After making sure that anchor was set, I jumped in the dingy and joined my boating buddies for cocktails on Passage.

The dingy ride from my anchorage to the slip is about one mile. The dingy made it but the Joe motor is now a bit sluggish. I will have to check the spark plugs and gas tomorrow.

After the evening on Passage, I jumped in the dingy and motored back the one mile to WaterMark in the dark. I was glad that the dingy did not go very fast on the ride back, as it was pitch black and difficult to see. I navigated by memory as the mooring balls and boats were memorized on the trip to the marina.

When I returned to WaterMark, the batteries on the computer were completely exhausted. In order to update the blog, I had to fire up the Coleman generator. It works good, however, it is very noisy. This is a quiet and peaceful anchorage and the generator is making quite a noise in the back of the boat.