Great Sale to Foxtown

Anchorage at Grand Sale Cay

We left Thursday for Grand Sale Cay. There’s good protection from the north and east winds so we reasoned that it’d be a good place to anchor and wait out the 30+ knot NE/E winds that were supposed to come Saturday and Sunday.

Thursday, Sean & Louise came over for dinner. On Friday, while it was still pretty calm, Martin and I inflated our SUPs (stand up paddle boards) and took them over to the cay. By the end I was standing up and managed not to fall in J  In the afternoon we picked up Sean and headed to the southern tip where there’s a blue hole. We forgot to make our glass-bottom bucket but it was still very cool to see a perfect blue circle in the water. By the time we returned to Blossom, it was blowing pretty consistently around 20-25 so we lifted our dinghy back up and stayed in.

It continued to blow at 20-25 knots through Saturday night. The anchorage provided good protection. Confined to the boat, we cooked a bit, (I’d been craving Thai soup) and worked on projects. Martin made our glass bottom bucket from instructions I’d downloaded before we left. We made water every day. Running both water makers at the same time we make 70 gallons an hour. That leaves us with plenty of water to spare for washing down the dinghy & SUPs, doing laundry, etc. I got some applique work done and Martin got to play a few computer games. We’ve also begun watching the tv series Game of Thrones in the evenings. (Bit violent, but interesting.) It was relaxing to be “stuck” in the anchorage with nowhere to go and no internet!

Vector at anchor at Great Sail

Martin getting the snubber off the anchor chain (it had wound around). It’s good to have a skinny butt when working on the bow J

By Sunday morning the winds had calmed down to 10-15 so we decided to head out. We took off a bit late and made it to Hawksbill Cay.   As soon as we’d anchored a skiff approached selling stone crab. Holy cow!  Martin Loves stone crab and these are amazing. Now I have to google how long to boil them. We’re eating well on Blossom!

Boat Business

• We had a scary moment when the pilot house smoke alarm went off Saturday afternoon.  We found that an internal fan on the pilot house electronics inverter had died. Martin installed this inverter in the fall to prevent us from losing electronics when we temporarily lost power, like changing from shore to generator power. Without the fan, the inverter overheated under the helm. Martin pulled the cover off the inverter and installed a box fan under there and it’s all working fine. He found that it was a cheap computer fan, which was hung upside down so it just fell apart.  We’ll eventually replace it with another and install it right-side up.
• Forward guest cabin drawer. Martin fixed the drawer that popped out because of the weight of the cans.
• Toilets. Our toilets are so ferociously powerful that even with the lid down, it sprays when flushed. We played with various water levels until we found a happy medium where they work as they should but don’t shower you in the process (gross!)
• DC regulators. Martin started 1 of 2 that he’ll be making. One is for the low battery warning on the ultrasonic hull cleaners. When our battery power falls below 23.5 they beep, loudly enough to wake me, usually at 5:30am L The other one is to increase the voltage on the DC fans.  These are the small fans that are hung on the ceiling throughout the boat. The fans had been 24v but they ran too fast – they were Loud. So he changed them to a 12v breaker, and then they ran too slowly, not creating enough of a breeze. With the DC regulator, we can run them at about 18v and find a happy medium between noise and efficacy.