Day 134, Year 10: Eyes on the Bahamas
Date: Saturday, February 21, 2015
Weather: Partly Cloudy, SE 10-20
Location: Dinner Key Marina Anchorage, Coconut Grove, FL
All eyes (and ears) are on the Bahamas now. We were up at 6:30 am this morning to listen to Chris Parker’s weather on the SSB radio. Chris advises subscribers on the best time to make crossings to the Bahamas and the Caribbean. We don’t pay for his service, so we can’t check-in and talk with him, but we can listen and hope that someone who is a subscriber wants to go our direction at the same time as us. He gives great weather overviews and this morning he talked about the strong weather systems we have been enduring for the past two months. Then he said the magic words—he thinks that after this week we might have ‘gentler’ weather for at least a couple of weeks. Sure hope he is right. We have read that the Bahamas can have unsettled weather in January and February with good weather on either side in December and March. Or it can have the reverse. Since our friends Ed and Lynne who are in the Exumas in the Bahamas say that they have had unsettled weather since they arrived in January, we are hoping for scenario #1 with a fair March following unsettled January and February. We’ll continue to listen to Chris over the next few days and hope that we will find our ‘window’ for crossing the Gulf Stream soon. But right now we are still dealing with windy weather here and even though the thermometer says we should feel warm, that wind still feels chilly. The high today was in the upper 60’s, but tomorrow it is supposed to be in the lower 80’s. Sounds great to me.
We are also getting ready to welcome our friends Tom and Detta Porat aboard for a few days. They fly into Fort Lauderdale from snowy New Hampshire on Monday. Can’t wait to see them. But as is typical when guests are coming, I spent part of my day doing some cleaning jobs that I have been putting off. The incentive of people coming to visit can make you put yourself into gear. The Sunbrella canvas covering our cockpit is light tan and sometime in the past month I looked up and noticed that there was a light coating of mildew. This happens when it is cool out and we zip up the cockpit to keep warm. The cockpit captures all the moisture from cooking and those nasty little mildew spots start appearing. So I did the magic cleaning job today and we once again have tan canvas without all the little polka dots. I also spent a great deal of time reading Dozier’s Waterway Guide to the Bahamas. I will read and reread this guide and others to get as familiar as possible with the islands we plan to visit. While I did this, Mark checked various weather sources, filled out the paperwork needed for entry into the Bahamas and made the duplicate copies necessary, and worked on plotting a route from Biscayne Bay across the Gulf Stream. Tomorrow the winds pipe down a bit and he will make a few runs to and from shore with jerry jugs of diesel to fill our tanks. Then we head to shore to catch a bus to the laundromat. Little by little we are getting ourselves ready for departure.
Saturday is the day that the yacht clubs have all the kids out racing the little sailing prams. Our friend Heather Turgeon, who is currently sailing around the world with her husband Jon, grew up here and has fond memories of sailing through the mooring field in a pram. These photos are for you, Heather.
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| 150221 Day 134 Florida, USA–Saturday Boat Races in Dinner Key Anchorage |
