Palm Cay Marina

View from the restaurant at the marina – showing the entrance channel on a windy day

We’re about to wrap up our week at Palm Cay - what a find!  We arrived last Tuesday after a calm ride up from Highbourne Cay, hoping to avoid two huge rainstorms that were behind and ahead of us. Luckily they blew to the east and we had a dry ride.

The entrance to the marina is bit tricky with a long, narrow dredged channel. There are lots of rocks in the channel but it’s supposed to be clear to 8 feet at low tide. It’s a bit disconcerting to be floating over so many corals and rocks in this clear water – they look much closer.

Blossom on her end tie

The marina was pretty full when we arrived. People were taking shelter from the westerly winds in this very protected area.  It has a nice restaurant, a beautiful beach side bar and pool and a courtesy car that you can sign up for and take out for 2 hours at a time for free.  The dockmaster and his assistant are incredibly friendly and accommodating. One the first things we did was to sign up for a car and visit a grocery store, liquor store and ATM. It was nice to provision at a large grocery store with everything you could want there.

Chess anyone?

Our first night at the marina we had cocktails and dinner at the marina restaurant, the Billfish Grill and met a couple living on their Nordy 47.  A few nights later when the rain stopped we had a dinner with Tim & Valerie at the restaurant again, it was “Pizza and Jazz” night. The pizza was tasty and the band and vocalist were very good. We sat on the porch eating pizza and drinking a nice rose, listening to a soulful rendition of a Sade classic. Yup, life is pretty darn good.

Friday afternoon we had watched a cat getting towed into the marina. We met the couple on the boat at happy hour that day and learned that they had hit a bommie on the way in to the marina. Through an unfortunate series of events, they had just lost a prop coming from Spanish Wells and then lost their second one while getting off the rocks. Talk about a bad day!  Saturday morning we helped them line their boat off the fuel dock into a slip. He said he hit a bommie in the channel and they only draw 4 feet. Even though it was low tide, that bommie would be just 7 feet under at high tide. We’re hoping that he was actually out of the channel!

A little squall blowing through :/

The weather was been less than stellar while we’ve been here (yes, that why we were here!) so we’ve really enjoyed being in a marina. On the rainy days we relaxed (sew & video games) and got some chores done. Blossom got a pretty thorough deep clean which was sorely needed. Somehow sand gets everywhere and there’s a coating of salt on everything – the windows, wall, mirrors… Blossom is looking spiffy again in time for my Mom!

We had a couple cool/overcast but dry days so we took advantage of it to take the bikes for a spin. The neighborhood is very nice and we enjoyed riding by the large houses with their manicured lawns. But with no shoulders on the road and lots of traffic it was a bit more exciting than I like. We enjoyed getting to know Tim & Val and had dinners at Billfish, aboard their boat and ours. They’re heading south from here but I hope that our paths will cross again! The week flew by in a blur of rain, wind and comfortable evenings chatting with our new friends. 

My Mom :)

And yesterday my Mom arrived! It’s wonderful to have her here with us. We also had a special dinner this evening with Sean & Louise who were able to make it to Nassau today from Eleuthera. We were so happy that they could get here and that we could have a goodbye dinner aboard Blossom. It feels so weird to be parting ways after over a year together. They’ll be hanging out for a few days in Nassau and then heading east to Bimini and continuing north from there. The cruising world is a small one and I’m sure we’ll be hanging out again soon, but it’s still sad to part ways!

Today we’re going to be heading south for Shroud Cay. It’s supposed to be calm and sunny (finally!) for the next few days and we’re looking forward to being back on the hook and able to explore and play in the water again.  This will be our first time underway with a guest (not a training or delivery captain guest). We’re excited for Mom to experience Blossom underway and to show her the beautiful sites. I can't wait for us to break out the SUPs, snorkels and fins!

Boat Business: A few maintenance items got done this week.

• Inside. I did a serious clean throughout the boat.
• Hull. We had B’s bottom power washed (Her green beard along the waterline was getting quite long.) We’ve never seen this technique done before – usually you scrape/scrub the bottom. The idea is that less paint gets scrubbed off with the power wash. We’ll be diving down and taking a look at the hull once we’re anchored to see how clean she is.
• Gens. Martin did an oil change on both gens.