Swing Set: Cruising Full Time
04/13/13A Slight Delay in Our Departure from Bimini SandsYesterday, I filled up the fuel tank in the dinghy, taking on a whopping 2.8 gallons at a cost of $18, in order to get ready for our intended departure to Port Lucaya on Saturday. When I started putting the dinghy up on the dinghy davits, I noticed some extra flex in the starboard davit. Upon closer inspection, I found two failed welds on the brace just at the most significant bend on the davit. This juncture takes the most stress, and I guess our crossing last weekend was too hard on it. My heart just sank at that moment, and I had to sit down and think. Had I noticed it last Monday, I could've had it fixed by now. Lesson learned to inspect the boat closer after a rough trip. I gave myself less than a minute to mope about it, and even had visions of scrapping our Bahamas... |
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04/12/13Bimini Sands MarinaThe weather window we had last weekend came and was gone by Monday afternoon. We made some use of our time here in Bimini and were able to accomplish a few things. First up was a trip to BaTelCo in Alice Town in the dinghy. I tied up to a dock at the Bimini Big Game Club, and Rosie and Holly stayed with the dinghy because I wasn't sure if they would run us off or not. Plus, Holly would have run off customers at the BTC office anyway. Two nice women and a young intern staff the BaTelCo office in Alice Town. None of them know what they're doing. I asked the first woman if the sale was still on for the monthly data plan, the one where you can get 1 gig of data for $20 instead of $30. I was told the sale ended last Friday. Of course it did. I said I wanted to buy a... |
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04/07/13North and South BiminiThis photo is looking south from South Bimini Island, actually from the tiki hut at Mackies Sand Bar at the Bimini Sands Beach Club, but more about that later. My blogs may not contain as many pictures as I'd like to publish while we are here in the Bahamas. Our current data plan only allows 800MBs of data transfer per month, and while this is an upgrade from the plan we instituted last week, it's still falls way short of what I'd prefer. We'll save data transfer on our MiFi device for email, weather and an occasional blog, hopefully at least once per week. Less pictures, and smaller ones, will allow us to retain the data transfer for the services we really need. After finding out at BaTelCo that we couldn't put their SIM card in our iPad, another... |
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04/03/13Finally in the BahamasOn Monday, April 1, we took a cab to the Marathon Veterinary Hospital so Holly could get her "physical" and health certificate for entering the Bahamas. Seventy-five dollars later, we were headed back to Boot Key Harbor, exactly one month to the day after her rabies shot. Her shot had to be administered no sooner than one month prior to her entry into the Bahamas, but we now also had, by law, 48 hours to check in at customs and immigration. We'd heard there is wiggle room in the 48 hour stipulation, but we hear lots of things. I'd filed a float plan with the Small Vessel Reporting Service, a feature administered by the U.S. Customs Service. This should allow us to enter back into the U.S. with just a phone call. I stated our last port as Marathon, knowing full... |
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03/31/13Back in BusinessAfter not having rain for quite some time, it's natural that on the morning we were to have the boat hauled at the Marathon Boatyard it would be raining. But we arrived at the scheduled time of 8 a.m. and waited patiently for Swing Set to get hauled out. Two hours later, we were in the sling. I purposely left the bottom alone for the last month, not scrubbing it or scraping any barnacles. I wanted to see how well our bottom paint was holding up. In my opinion, it wasn't. None of the running gear had any paint left on it at all. A great deal of barnacles had found a home on the hull, and there was plenty of plant life to go along with it. We'd taken Swing Set out three times and had run it up to speed, which I thought would have sloughed off the bottom growth, but... |
