Last night, for the first time since arriving in the Bahamas, we had hard rain and thunderstorms all night, accompanied by wind and wave motion in the marina. We were quite comfortable, of course, in the slip, and hoped that our sailing friends in the Bahamas and the portions of Florida also affected by this front yesterday were snug and secure. The weather actually turned nice late in the day today, although more rain and thunderstorms are coming tonight and tomorrow morning.
As we have hopes of leaving Tuesday, we took another walk to Solomon’s Yamacraw grocery, this time mainly for meats that Paula could cook for additional meals. The rain had stopped, but many of the residential streets had flooded. At the grocery store we met a couple shopping who were also from the marina. They offered us a ride, which we declined, needing to stretch our legs. We set off home, with a full back-pack and a few additional bags, only to have a car stop for us. It was two of the staff from Palm Cay, who recognized us and sweetly insisted on giving us a lift.
Once home, Paula created a frenzy of activity in the galley, and became grouchy. Tommy stayed out of the way. Just as the heat and moisture from cooking began to be noticeable in the cabin, the air conditioner stopped and sounded its distress beep. We had used it last night as the boat was closed up tight against the weather and left it on while the cooking was going on. Tommy took his usual repair position, head down into the bilge. Amazingly, there was hardly anything in the sea strainer. Some further investigation with one of Tommy’s home-made “poking” tools revealed that so much vegetation had gotten in to the water from the storms that some of it stopped up our air conditioner’s thru-hull. He had that cleared quickly, the A/C came back on and the cabin cooled.
We now have whole baked chicken and its stock, a pot roast with root vegetables, and pasta sauce with sausage, vegetables, and ground turkey. We ate some of the last for dinner tonight. This all should provide at least 6 good-sized meals for us, with minimal prep required at anchor. Which is where we hope we’ll be from Tuesday onward.
Our general plan when we leave here is to take a course southeast for about 35 – 40 miles and anchor at one of the northern Cay’s in the Exuma chain, either Allan’s Cay or Norman’s Cay. The forecast still has the wind direction from the N – NW for Tuesday and most of Wednesday. If that holds, we’ll likely head for Norman’s Cay which is a bit further south but has some NW protection in one of its anchorages. The weather from Thursday on for several days in a row has the wind shifting to the east (finally!) which opens up a lot of nice anchoring options on the bank side of the Exuma chain as we make our way south. We have no particular destination in mind, and if we find a place we like a lot (and the weather cooperates) we may stay a while. Hoping tomorrow mornings weather update remains favorable.
One thing we’ve taken a little for granted here at Palm Cay is the available wifi service in the marina and the excellent cell phone service. Both of these may be spotty and/or non-existent in several of the anchorages we hope to get into in the Exuma’s. Once again, you may not see a post everyday, but then see several all at once. We’ll be giving the wifi booster and the cell signal amplifier a good workout.
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Norman’s Cay has the wrecked body of a drug plane from the “good old days” . Also we had a fellow boater(from the Defever Group) built a house there. Their boat name was 2 turtles.