Day 166, Year 10: Island Time
Date: Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Weather: Partly Sunny, Winds SE 5-10
Location: Anchored at Black Point, Great Iguana Cay, Exumas
Some things never change and one of those things is island time. When someone says something will take 20 minutes, you can be pretty sure it will take at least two hours and maybe more. Mark and I had a huge list of things to be done today. We got off to a great start. Mark took me to shore to the laundromat and he went to get two jerry jugs of water. I got the laundry going and started uploading photos from the past week. I wrote post cards to the grandkids and Mark took those to the PO. So far, so good. But then the power on the island went down and so did our hopes of getting everything done today. I had just put my clothes in the dryer and I was right in the middle of uploading lots of folders of photos to the internet. Both of those activities came to an abrupt stop. We were told the power would be off for only 20 minutes, but we knew that was probably a little optimistic. We went back to the boat to have lunch and when we returned an hour a half later, there was still no power. The power did finally come back on and I got the loads of laundry dried and folded and some of the photos uploaded. But I had to stop on that endeavor as I had promised Mark we would go back to the boat so he could dive on the bottom to clean it. We tried this past week, but the current was so strong everywhere we anchored that cleaning the bottom was just not possible. It is calm here and Mark got a great start, but a leaky snorkel mask slowed things down a bit. By this time, it was nearing 5 pm and we had to reconsider our plans for tomorrow. We had hoped to sail north tomorrow, but the bottom is not completely cleaned and the photos are not completely uploaded. And we didn’t even get a chance to do our internet shopping for our grandson Ziggy. His birthday is on April 7. That’s the day we hope to arrive in Florida, but between here and there, we will not have internet. Therefore, that shopping’ also has to be done before we leave here. So Mark went over to talk to Lee and Lynda to see if they would be agreeable to staying here one more day and heading north on Friday. They didn’t have strong feelings one way or another, so stay it is. It seems a shame to spend another whole day “taking care of business” rather than be out there experiencing new places and snorkeling, but for sure we’ll be back on the road by Friday morning.
There is another issue that we also need to resolve before leaving here. Lee and Lynda’s VHF radio does a great job of transmitting, but they can only receive from boats that are very close to them. And we can send them emails via our HAM radio, but when they send something to us, it is rejected. We are getting email just fine via the HAM radio from other people, so we really don’t know what the problem might be. They do have an SSB radio and we can always set definite times each day to contact one another, but it would be nice to be able to talk back and forth on the VHF on the trip back across the Gulf Stream. If either of us had a problem on that trip, as it is right now, we would have no way of communicating quickly. So if time permits tomorrow, Mark will work with Lee to see if they can figure out the problem with the VHF.
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| 150325 Day 166 Bahamas–Mark Suited Up for Bottom Cleaning |
