Photos from Bahamas

My new wrist gadget seemed to work very well. The anchorage was very rolly and I didn't get sick at all. I'll keep using it and see I do in bumpy seas.

Visitors on the hook off Matanilla Shoal.

 Our anchor track looks just like a chicken!

Vector anchored off Walker Cay.

Rosie's Marina, Grand Cay.

Martin enjoying a beer at Rosie's.

Hello from the Bahamas!

Our first post from the Bahamas!

Our trip over was calm and uneventful. Seas started at 2 feet and calmed down to even less so it was a comfortable ride. We left at dawn, along with many, many boats.  It seems that everyone was heading over to the West End where they can anchor or dock at a marina and check in.  We travelled a bit farther north, entering north of Memory Rock and then turned due north toward Matanilla Shoal.  We had planned to anchor on the shore in an area known for dolphin sighting. As it turned out, the forecast was a bit off and the dolphins scarce!  We had two play on the bow for a bit and Sean saw one leap out of the water but that was it for sightings. We were essentially anchored in the ocean and it blew over 20 knots in the night so we had a lumpy bumpy night. Can I tell you how much we love our flopper stoppers?!

We headed out as soon as possible the next day and went due east towards Walker Cay. We had decided to check at Spanish Cay but then changed our minds. It’ll take a few days to get to Spanish Cay and until we check in, we can’t leave the boat. There are a few islands on the way and we wanted to get our phones sorted out so we would have internet.  So this morning, Martin & Sean headed in to Walker Cay.

It turned out that they’re rebuilding the customs building so immigration is over at Grand Cay, about 5 miles east. So Sean & Martin headed over there.  The office had to get some kind of paperwork from the next boat so they asked them to come back in afternoon. But the guys were able to get the phones sorted (hence…this blog post!).  The customers and immigration officer was really nice and checked us in as soon as the boat arrived.  We got a full 180 day immigration visa – woo hoo!  After checking in, we enjoyed a few Kalik beers and an amazing lobster dinner at Rosie’s. It was a wonderful day in the Bahamas!

The dinghy ride back to Blossom & Vector was exciting at night, through shallow water with a building sea. We got a bit wet! Now it’s Thursday morning and we’re expecting very high winds over the weekend. We’re about to leave for a well protected anchorage south of here. We won’t have internet there so we won’t be posting on the blog again until Monday or Tuesday. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t get my act together quickly enough so there are no pictures in the blog. The next entry will have lots of them!!

Boat Business

Blossom ran well but we have a few things to address.

• Autopilot and rudder have just not been playing well together. Martin reset everything and spent hours playing with settings and he thinks he’s got it worked out now.
• The fly bridge VHF radio is no longer working. It worked fine coming down to North Palm Beach so we didn’t think to test it, but somehow it died while we were there. This is a drag as we were planning to run Blossom from the fly bridge and now we’ll only have our portable VHF up there which has a much weaker signal. Hopefully we’ll be able to sort that out.
• We developed a slight leak in one of our main engine racors. 
• We tested our new black tank hose installation to make sure that all the clamps were on tight, thankfully they were!
• Another drawer filled with cans popped out but no damage done. I’m going to start taping the heavy ones shut with blue tape.

Heading to the Bahamas

It looks like it's time to go!

We were able to finish up our work just in time for a weather window to open up. After more than two weeks, the seas are predicted to be only 2 feet tomorrow across the Gulf Stream. It's a one day window of calm with seas building back up on Tuesday.

Our anchorage, south and north views

We left the marina this morning and moved to an anchorage just south of the inlet.  It's the first sunny and warm day we've had in a while and Every Body was out on the water!  It was a bit of a zoo.

This afternoon, we've been watching the anchorage fill up as boats come in to anchor and prepare for an early departure tomorrow morning. It's going to look like a mass exodus at dawn!  We're also doing some last minute stowing of things, posting the blog, trying to get some emails and phone calls in before we head out.

Skyping in the cockpit

Vector is anchored just north of us, also getting ready for our passage tomorrow.  Our plan is to shoot pretty much straight across and anchor on the white sands bank. Immigration at West End is going to be nuts with so many people heading over tomorrow so we'll stay at anchor over night and then continue on for a port of entry. We're not sure exactly where we'll go, perhaps Walker, Spanish or Green Turtle Cays.

We're all so excited for our Bahamian Adventure to begin :)

Boat Business

Our visit in North Palm Beach extended out to two weeks. It was an incredibly productive time and we got most if not all of our “to-do’s” accomplished.  We snuck some fun/social times in there, but for the most part, it was all about the boat and provisioning for the Bahamas.  I didn’t even take any photos while we were there!

Here’s what we’ve been up to…

Warranty Work:

Rob, Chris & Fernando came first thing last Monday morning. They flew through the list and addressed all but one of our issues that day. They had to wait for supplies to come in for the last task with was completed later in the week.  They rock!

• Main Shaft. The amount of compression in the shaft seal was adjusted which enabled the seal to be better seated and eliminated a possible chafing risk.
• Windshield Wiper. A C clip that the tensioning spring was attached to was replaced.
• Hydraulic Leaks. Two leaks were fixed. One was caused by a faulty crimp so the hose was replaced.  The other was repaired with a flair saver.
• Popping breaker. Unstuck the raw water wash down pump. The metal impellor got stuck and was causing the breaker to pop.
• “Grey” tank smell. Nope, we were very wrong. It was in fact, permeated black tank hose.  We had upgraded to Trident hoses which are supposed to permeate much more slowly than regular hoses, but it seems we got bad hose. Trident was used in the system going from the tank to the through hull for when we can pump overboard (3+ miles off shore).  All these hoses were replaced and the smell is gone, replaced by a mild rubber smell of new hoses.  Apparently it’s very unusual to have this happen. We’re just very grateful to the Nordhavn folks for their quick service and for replacing all that hose under warranty.
• Watermaker.  The control board on the front watermaker has failed. Tom, from Watermaker came out to help diagnose. Setttings were figured out so we can use it until we get the control board replaced.

Detailing:

We had a bit of drama with this one.  We had scheduled well in advance (a month) to have the boat detailed by the guy who had worked on Blossom while she was in Stuart. Old Port Cove has limited space where this work can be done and they said we couldn’t do it there so we had to find another marina where both Nordhavn and the detailer could work. This is why we came to North Palm Beach Marina rather than Old Port Cove. We called to confirm a few days before arriving and got a call back on Sunday to say he’d be by to start on the boat the next day, Monday morning.  Monday afternoon he called to say he’d be by next week!  We estimated that it would take about 5 days to get detailed. We hoped to be ready to head out to the Bahamas the following week. We knew there was a chance the weather wouldn’t cooperate but we wanted to be ready to grab the first possible opportunity. Cancelling/postponing on us the very day work is to begin is - not cool.

We didn’t know what to do so Martin called James Knight in a bit of a panic to see if he could refer someone. 30 minutes later one of his team showed up at the boat to assess what we needed done.  Hours later we had a quote. The next morning, 3 men arrived and began detailing Blossom. They did a fabulous job and Blossom looks so much better. Thank you James (and Chris, BJ and Manni)!!

Martin the contortionist working on the black tank sensor

Maintenance:  Martin has been burning through his maintenance to-do list.

Dinghy: Outboard serviced. Oil change, filters changed. Grease points attended.

• Raw water system: All raw water strainers were inspected and cleaned and a couple of baskets were repaired.
• Engines: Oil change, filter change, secondary and final filter changes on main, wing and both generators.
• Windless inspected and lubed.
• Maretron black tank sensor died, he replaced it with a new one. (*A special thank you to Alex from Maz Ocean for exceptional service, again!)
• Replaced the flopper lines with Spectra line (non stretchy)
• Updated Maretron ipad software, and helped the developer figure out there’s a glitch in the new version! J
• Recalibrated rudder indicator for autopilots
• Downloaded and activated the explorer charts for the Bahamas onto Furuno and Nobeltec
• Ordered spare parts for the John Deere engines.
• Wired the extraction fan in machinery space to on/off rather than timer switch.
• Lowered the middle float switch in the grey tank. When the tank level reaches this switch it triggers a pump to empty the tank overboard. By lowering the switch, the pump triggers more frequently and there’s less water standing in the tank and what is in there is pumped over board more frequently.
• Replaced the membranes in the forward watermaker (which turned out not to be the problem so now we have spares).
• Mildewcide packs were placed in all outside lockers.

    Phew!

Provisioning:

We also spent the past two weeks provisioning. We bought enough stores for 3 months. This required combing through recipes and updating the spreadsheet I have for our supplies. We rented a car for a week and managed to get to Costco, Publix, Trader Joe's, Bed Bath & Beyond and Total Wine & Liquor :)  

It's surprising how much thought is required to think 3 months out. Food, alcohol, paper goods, bug spray, Rx's, cleaning products, spare parts, quilt fabric ;)... We've got it all. Of course, you can shop in the Bahamas but it's likely to be more expensive and we wanted to not need to shop for anything other than fresh foods. We're sitting low in the water and are well prepared...

Stalking Blossom

We've had more than a few people ask us, "Where are you?" While the blog does a great job of telling you where we've been, it doesn't help to show where we are. There are, however, a couple of ways you can find out.

AIS

AIS - Automatic Identification System - is the best way. If you don't want to follow the link, AIS takes certain information about Blossom - her position, speed, heading - and broadcasts over VHF radio. This information can be received by any other AIS system within VHF range.

Blossom is equipped with AIS. It's a Furuno FA-150 and it gives us a commercial grade footprint in the AIS world. You can read about AIS in great detail following the link above to Wikipedia, so suffice it to say that Blossom has a class A AIS system that we keep on all the time.

None of which helps you as you most likely don't have an AIS system and even if you did, it's unlikely to be within VHF range (which is line of sight). Fortunately for you there exists land based AIS receivers who then make that information available to web sites you can visit. Here are a few we like:

marinetraffic.com
vesselfinder.com

These links go directly to Blossom's location.

If you have a site you'd rather use, you can find Blossom easily using her MMSI - 367614140

There will be times when Blossom will not be within range of a ground station. On these occasions, you have two choices. You can pay for a premium service that uses satellite based stations - Marinetraffic has such a service - or you can use SPOT.

SPOT

Spot - http://www.findmespot.com/en/ - is a satellite based service provided on a for-profit basis when tracking is desired and AIS is unfeasible. Blossom also has a SPOT. It's a GEN3 device and we have it in our pilot house, pinging away. We've upgraded our service to "tracking extreme" and set things up so that it reports our position every hour. You can follow along on Blossom's page:

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0eNyPtIU1J4iKVWzz5CpWRYIsnz7qYr1A

A caveat: Despite all attempts to prevent it, the GEN3 will go into a "sleep" mode if it's not moving. So if we're at dock and/or anchored and there isn't enough vibration to keep the GEN3 awake, it won't send a location update. So that means the last pin may be from longer than an hour ago. I'll try to do a "message" pin after we dock/anchor so you'll know that is what we're doing.


I hope this helps all our stalkers out there in their stalking activities and look forward to surprise visits! Just don't forget the wine :-)

Rest In Peace Nana

My Aunt Marge and Nana 

(thank you Marge for such a wonderful photo!)

My Nana, Ruth Maurer, passed away on Valentine’s Day. She will be so very missed by her family and friends. I imagine her now free from pain, happily reunited with my grandpa, enjoying chocolate, and playing with her dachshounds who crossed the rainbow bridge and have been waiting to greet her.  

Family and friends will be celebrating her life today. Martin and I weren’t able to join our family in Pennsylvania, but we join them in our hearts and are sending our love and comfort as they say goodbye to Nana.  Rest in peace, Nana.

  ❤

Getting Work Done in North Palm Beach

We arrived at our anchorage in the St. Lucie River, just past the Roosevelt Bridge, on Wednesday afternoon. Winds were supposed to be gusting up to 30knots on Thursday and Friday so rather than head down to Palm Beach on Thursday, we thought it best to relax and wait out the windy weather and go down on Saturday.

A peaceful evening at anchor on the St. Lucie

With high winds expected, we deployed our flopper stoppers. Martin had installed swivels on the fish and they seemed to help quite a bit. We did have a little bit of twisting but only for about 1 foot, not taking up all 15+ feet of retrieval line like in the Dry Tortugas.

We had an interesting thing happen on Friday. Early in the morning we heard a strange groaning sound. We looked around and couldn’t see anything wrong but I felt like the boat was leaning much farther to port than it had been the night before. (I think my sensitivity to sea sickness gives me a preternatural ability to detect the slightest imbalance in the boat. No, this ability doesn’t make up for getting sea sick!) Then I noticed that the retrieval line was taught, as in, it was actually taking the full weight of the boat, holding Blossom in place rather than allowing her stern to swing around. I think the groaning was the line under extreme strain.  The retrieval line is a line that runs from the metal (hanging) fish to the cockpit where it’s tied to a cleat. You use this line to pull in the fish.

When we looked at our swing circle, you could see the boat was being held perpendicular to the current (which was ripping) because her stern was stuck fast by the line. Yet the fish (to which the other side of the rope was attached) was hanging freely and not hung up.  At first we were afraid that the line had somehow hung up on the anchor or anchor chain. But we didn’t have enough of it free for it to be caught so far away.

We pulled in the starboard fish and fired up the engines. We nudged up about 10 feet and the line freed itself. It was a relief that it was so easy.  We figure it must have snagged on something on the bottom – something strong enough to hold and even tilt a 72+ ton boat against the current. Thank God we didn’t catch our anchor on whatever it was!

The winds weren’t as bad as expected on Thursday so we had been debating whether or not to head south on Friday. With 7 bridges to open and get through, we didn’t want to have to station keep in 30 knot winds. But by Friday morning the wind still wasn’t nearly as bad as had been predicted and we preferred to mess with the ICW and bridges on a week day rather than a crowded weekend. We end up making it down to North Palm Beach in about 4 hours, no problem.

North Palm Beach Marina is a very nice facility. We arrived mid-afternoon and got settled in our slip. Martin ran into Rob, Chris and Fernando, from Nordhavn, on the dock that afternoon. They came by to take a quick look at the boat and the list of things we need to have done.

We spent the weekend steeped in lists, chart books and guides. It feels a bit daunting and very exciting. We have a warranty list for the guys, a long maintenance list for Martin (thank you Wheelhouse technologies! ;), a housekeeping list (we could be out of the country for up to 3 months so bills and payments need to be dealt with) and provisioning lists (boat parts, food, and sundries) as well as needing to finalize our travel plans for the Bahamas.  Woo hoo…things are happening!

Crossing the state of Florida

And so we made the passage from Cabbage Key to Stuart.  This trip was a mix of fun and stress. There were highlights that were a great time, lowlights when tempers flared a bit, and pucker moments when we grounded and touched bottom.  Final analysis – glad we did it, but now we need a few days to recover!  

The first day we went from our anchorage in Cabbage Key to Tarpon Point Marina in Cape Coral. We stopped there so we could see Brad & Lorraine, whom we met at the Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show. They have a similar boat to ours, Adventure, which they keep at the marina. We had a really nice dinner aboard Blossom with Brad, Lorraine, Sean & Louise. The marina is beautiful and the staff is very friendly. We stayed on their brand new floating docks. We would love to go there again and spend more time exploring.There’s a very shallow entrance to the marina so we planned our arrival and departure carefully (with tide levels) and Vector went ahead of us to taking soundings.  We saw just over 7 feet when we entered but swung wider on the way out and found deeper water.

Tarpon Point Marina

The most amazing sunset at Tarpon Point Marina

Vector in the anchorage outside Tarpon Point Marina

We wanted to wait for tide to rise the next day so we made a short day of it and planned to stop about 24 miles down the river at Calusa Jack’s Marina.  On the way we passed under a bridge and saw two huge yellow lifts/hoists rolling across the bridge.

As we approached the bridge, something began lowering down and we realized it was a huge crane. These guys knew what they were doing and of course it was on the ground by the time we passed through but we were wide-eye’d watching our clearance lower as we approached the bridge!

Yellow lift things

Lowering a crane

Jack’s Marina was a great place to stop. Joe & his wife Shawna run the marina and they’re the nicest folks ever. The marina is small with a transient dock right on the river that they just refurbished last summer. We were able to pull up and dock one in front of the other. Vector was at the far east end and had to move a bit closer to us as it got shallow and they touched when waked. We had enough under our keel that we didn’t touch bottom at all. Joe offered to take us in to town if we needed anything and sent us off with a dozen fresh laid eggs from the chickens they raise on their property. Mart and I needed to stretch our legs so we walked a mile into town and picked up some milk and lunch food at the grocery store. We would stop there again in a heartbeat.

The next day we were up and out at first light. We had 43 miles ahead with 3 locks and 3 on demand bridges. We thought we would stop at Moore Haven but once we got going we decided to push on the extra 13 miles to Clewiston. There isn’t much of anything in Moore Haven and the depths at the dock were a bit questionable. Clewiston looked like it had more going for it, including a Tiki Bar!

The view along the river before and after Colusa Jacks Marina was very pretty. Lots of trees and cows.

Bucolic setting

Locking

Prior to this trip, we had gone through 2 locks on the east coast – one in Cape Canaveral and one in Great Bridge Virginia (we went through that one twice).  On this trip we would be going through 5 locks, 3 rising and 2 descending water levels.  These locks were a bit different in that they provided the ropes for you. In some cases you can grab them with a boat hook from the wall and twice there was a lock tender who handed them down to you. Going through the locks wasn’t particularly difficult but it got more comfortable after having gone through a couple. I was happy the biggest drop (14 feet) was our last. We got two awesome pics from Sean & Louise.

Blossom lake-height in the St. Lucie Lock

 Blossom river-height in the St. Lucie Lock

Blossom in the Moore Haven Lock

Vector in the St. Lucie Lock

[Martin]

There's an old saying that there's two kinds of boaters. Those who've run aground and those who haven't... yet! We left the company of the second group quite a while ago while heading up to Baltimore. Then there was the time entering Lake Worth in North Palm Beach. We can now add a third time. Heading around the lake to Clewiston is done in a channel just outside of the lake "proper". While going through this stretch, I managed to cut a right hand corner just a little too tight and ran us aground. Fortunately, our previous experience made this less stressful than it could have been: Fire up the wing; thrust the stern left (towards the deeper water); hard reverse; and we're off!

[end Martin, back to Steph :-)]

This leg of the trip also included a narrow, shallow spot near some metal pilings near construction. The channel markers can get moved around by river weeds and we had been warned that there was an obstruction under water that someone had hit with their boat.  That was a tense pass through made a bit more so when a small boat coming the other way zipped past us rather than waiting for us to come through. 

Vector passing the construction area

Entering Roland Martin Marina, in Clewiston, you turn 90 degrees into an open, narrow lock that you pass through to get to the canal. We had called ahead to the marina and they were able to take us both on their fuel dock. When we got there, there were several small boats getting fuel. We had to go down a narrow channel past them all and were able to dock just shy of some overhanging power lines that were lower than our height!  We just fit. The channel is too narrow to turn around in and we weren’t looking forward to the idea of backing up so far to get out. So in the morning, we pushed Blossom back to butt up against Vector’s bow. This put us in a much better place to exit and because of our height, it put us exactly on level with the Tiki Bar. It was weird to sit up in the pilot house and wave to the waitresses J

Tiki bar as seen through our starboard pilot house window

View of the channel from the boat

We stayed at Roland Martin for 2 nights. The first night we had dinner at the Tiki Bar and Louise showed her adventurous side by ordering “gator”. I got a hamburger J We were surprised at how few people were there since the superbowl was on. By contrast, there were millions of mosquitoes, and in February!  I’ve never been to a restaurant where the waitress gives you bug spray (thank God!). We managed to watch through the half time commercials before we were too tired and had to go to bed.

Sean and the big screen

Me, wearing a scarf to deter mosquitoes from exsanguinating me  and breathing into a "bag" made of paper towel to get rid of hiccups. I’m nothing if not glamorous.

Clewiston is home to fearsome “Jackalopes” 

 as you can see J

The next day we had a day off from moving (much of our motivation for passing Moore Haven and continuing on).  Martin and I washed Blossom very thoroughly for 3 hours in the morning. (And she was covered in ash by the next day from the burning sugar fields). Sean and I took the courtesy car to Walmart where I bought cheese and wine - such the party girl. In the afternoon, our friends arrived.  

Our main reason for going to that particular marina was to meet up with a friend of ours from back in 09’. We met Richard (“Moose”) and Kathy early on in our travels aboard Lucky at our first stop – Key West.  Serendipity for sure, we bumped into them at Bahia Mar again in 2012 while we were there for Trawlerfest. We’ve been keeping in touch via email for years. It just so happened that they were traveling east to west aboard Moose’s fishing boat Eagle VI, through the state on route to Key West. They had plans to stop at Roland Martin and it worked out perfectly that we could see them. They arrived the next day and we spent a wonderful afternoon/evening with them. It was so awesome to see them and catch up. I hope we’ll see them again next year, hopefully in the Bahamas!

Moose & Kathy

Moose, Kathy, Me & Mart (and Vector)

Tuesday morning we all left (Eagle VI, Vector and us) at 9am. This was a a medium long day, about 35 miles. We could have pushed harder and arrived in Stuart but we felt a five hour day was plenty. This was the day that we crossed Lake Okeechobee and then passed through one lock. I knew it was windy and the lake was supposed to be choppy so I took a Bonine. I thought it wasteful to use a patch for a 5 hour day. It wasn’t the best decision. I was a little unsettled after an engine room check and then got so, so tired. I need to get the scopolamine made into a gel to use. (Another Nordy owner contacted me to let me know this can be done. It sounds great. I’m going to try to get this done while we’re in North Palm Beach).  

We pulled into Indiantown Marina and found it was much smaller than we’d  thought.  Martin did a great job of maneuvering into place in a fairly tight space but tying lines got dramatic as we got very close to a sailboat. I wanted to give it more space and got stressed out as the dock hand was telling Martin we were fine, and Martin got stressed out by it all. Tired and cranky, it wasn't our best docking. Once in place, I promptly crashed for 3 hours. I woke up to happy hour aboard Vector and a nice mile walk into town for an Italian dinner with Sean & Louise.  A good end to a long day.

Blossom in Indiantown Marina

Wednesday we left late morning for the last, short, 27 mile leg of journey across the state. We went through the St. Lucie lock and arrived in Stuart mid afternoon. We experienced some of the shallowest water of the entire trip between the lock and the Roosevelt Bridge. We cruised on with “.0 to .2” feet under our keel for quite a ways. We assume we were plowing through some silt, especially when our sensitive depth sounder decided to read in the 100s for a while.  Right now we’re anchored out in the same anchorage we came to our first night of owning and cruising aboard with Jeff in August. It’s calm, peaceful and pretty. We’re supposed to go to North Palm Beach tomorrow but we’re putting it off for 1 or 2 days. There’s a big storm due to arrive tonight/tomorrow with thunder/lightening and up to 30 knot winds. We don’t need to go out in that. We’ll head south when the winds fall to </= 20 knots. Probably Sat or Sun. Until then, we’re going to cuddle up in the boat and enjoy some down time.

Boat Business: Blossom is running great. We do have a very long list of maintenance items and projects to work on and a relatively small list of warranty items. We’ll have a blog post just on Boat Business by the time we leave North Palm Beach for the Bahamas. 

The only new thing that we noticed is that we have sprung a second, very slow/small hydraulic leak a few inches down from the original. We’ll just add that to the list, it shouldn’t be a big deal to fix.