7 days before we leave and we have filled up every nook and cranny with food! Tomorrow we are going to fill up the diesel tanks and the water tanks so that when Wednesday comes we just have to take off. The weather has been perfect this week, but there is a hurricane coming up from the Caribbean and next week is going to be much cooler! tough luck, we can't leave any earlier because my sister arrives on the 30th to sail down with us. So I guess we'll just have to take whatever comes our way. At least it won't be raining.

Liberty is also ready will be provisioning this weekend. There are two other boats on our dock going South around the same dates, so it should be fun.

Fleet complete

What a long day yesterday! We left at 5:55 from Solomon's and got into a windy and surprisingly wavy bay. We sailed downwind with the waves folowing and made very good speed just with the genoa but the wave action was so uncomfortable and unexpected that when I went down to make coffee it caught me unawares and made me fly to the other side of the boat. Nothing broken though, just bruised.
Then the head broke, so we spent twelve long hours studying up to be hired for the trapeze at the Cirque du Soleil, using the railings as props.
We made it into hampton, met our friends at Beau Soleil, who kindly lent us spares to fix the head, had a nice hot shower at Bluewater marina and slept.
Today we begin the odissey in the intercoastal: bridge openings, the lock and depth restriction ...
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Zingaro stays put, Far Away leaves

Zingaro will hibernate peacefully in Herrington Harbour between Liberty and Nehalennia, in the spot left by Sweet Tides, in the meantime its crew will attempt to take Far Away to Puerto Rico. The adventure starts on Wednesday, November 18th.

Posts for this voyage will be in http://farawaybound.blogspot.com

Back to the grindstone, for some of us anyway

Zingaro and Sweet Tides are not in the Bahamas anymore so I will need to end this blog, or maybe transform it to reflect our summer long parties in the Chesapeake with the Sexy Sailors and Sailorettes. I will have to think about it, I am sure that with the Spooner reunion planned for June, plus our extreme dancers we will have very nice pictures for the slide show.
Zingaro is sleeping tonight 15 miles north of Georgetown, SC (some place called Waca Maca or something like that) while Sweet Tides is doing its second overnight from St. Augustine to Beaufort, N.C. They have become fearless sailors!
Hopefully if all goes well, Juan and Tom will be in Herrington Harbor by Saturday and Idette and Mike will be meeting up with their children in Charleston.
I abandoned ship in Miami, my last trip was from the marina at the Marriott to the MIami River yard where Zingaro was taken out of the water to have its cutlass bearings replaced and the shaft aligned. It must have worked because I have heard no complaints about the vibration. Sweet Tides came out of the water in Ft. Lauderdale to replace its prop. Its Autoprop had a loose blade and another blade was stuck. So much for Autoprops, they really, really suck.
As to my fantasy of getting to work by boat, it's a good thing I did it, so I know not to do it again. Fantasy and work don't really go together. Too much stress.

Back in Miami!

After the wonderful crossing (Idette gave herself a manicure and pedicure on the way) we arrived in No Name Harbor, in Key Biscayne - which during the week is an idyllic place - but during the weekends it becames a noisy inferno. And although it was a Friday it was the last day od Spring Break. So between children screaming, power boats anchoring in every nook and cranny and the singer at the Boater's Grill who sang loud and off key - it was very Miami. There is a sign by the restaurant that says that "all vessels arriving from foreing(sic) must call customs" and they give a number, which of course we knew we had to do it, that was all the cruisers talked about on the radio since they couldn't complain about the weather. The problem is you call and they keep you on hold literally for hours. I ran down Juan's battery and Idette did the same with hers. Mike finally got through at midnight. When you get through they give you an arrival number that you have to take with you to the port of miami with your passports
Juan's cousin kindly lent us a car and yesterday we set off for the custom's office. Luckily as we were driving there I managed to get through and get our arrival number because they will not see you before that.
There was poor guy with a cell phone on speakephone waiting for somebody to pick up while listening to their recording.
At the window they had one of those old fashioned bells with a button you push down on and Mike promptly proceded to ring it. A customs officer came out, gave him a dirty look, removed the bell and went back to his desk!
But in spite of this we managed to check in.
I am now in a plane to San Francisco. Vacations are over.
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Just a few more hours....

We are about 5 or 6 boats ready to go. There's nothing to do in Bimini so we are just sitting in our boats, cleaning the fridge, listening to music, reading, looking at the weather forecasts, doing internet. Just waiting. But tomorrow is it, all forecasts show we should have a decent crossing so fingers crossed.
Tonight it's Sweet Tides' anniversary so we are having champagne and ice cream, we don't have a freezer so we put the ice cream in ice. Hopefully it won't melt!!
Tomorrow night we hope to be celebrating in No Name Harbor, in Key Biscayne!!!

Bimini

Our last stop before Miami. We could have stayed at Cat Cay - which would have been better to cross to Miami and is much nicer, but the marina was outrageously expensive, so we sailed a couple of hours to the north, and docked in Bimini to wait for weather. According to the forecasts we might be able to cross on Thursday or Friday, the closer to Saturday the better but since I fly to San Francisco on Sunday morning I don't think we are going to cut it so short.

Bimini is not very nice, the town is only marginally better than Georgetown and a lot dirtier. Our last adventure in the Bahamas will be crossing the Gulf, after that Miami and then it will be Juan's task to take Zingaro back with a little help from our friends.

Although it was great, when it was great, we had a lot of bad weather, I would have to go back to the blog and count how many days we had to hide in marinas and stay put just waiting for the wind to die down. All in all we are happy to be going home.

Cat Cay on to bimini

We left the cursed anchorage in Nassau and had a pleasant ride to Chubb Cay. The original intention was to continue on to the banks and spend the night there but the forecast called for heavy squalls so we stayed put in the marina.

Yesterday we left at 6:30 because we knew we had a very long ride. The plan was to go to Bimini but there were awful storms to the north of us, we manage to skirt them by heading further South to Cat Cay. We had planned to turn North from the Cat Cay waypoint, but the Sweet Tides saw a big storm coming on their Sirius and in spite of my protests at the outrageous price of the marina here we came in. Just in time too, because as soon as we had tied up it poured and gusted to 30 knots.

The approach to Cat Cay was also awful because it was dead low tide and we showed nothing under our keel quite often. It looks as if we will be able to cross on Wednesday, so we will move to Bimini where the marina costs a dollar a foot rather than the 4.50 they charge here!

High Drama in the Anchorage

Nassau Harbor has been atwitter for a few days: must be the boredom of having to wait for weather anchored here.

Two nights ago, a catamaran anchored very close to shore reported an intruder: somebody naked swam to their boat, they flashed the light at him and he quickly dove in the water and disappeared. The following night another catamaran anchored too close to Sweet Tides and in the middle of the night they had a collision. No harm done except for the fright and the aggravation. The catamaran re-anchored a little further away.

Last night, the wind blew from the North and swung all the boats 180 degrees. Suddenly many of us starting having close ups of boats we had not seen before. A ketch which had anchored last night at an uncomfortable distance when the wind changed became really close. The skipper was arrogant and rude and although they were the ones to anchor near us, we decided that it was too dark and windy to discuss anchoring etiquette and re-anchored a little further up to avoid damaging our boat.

A couple of hours later the same boat became too close to another boat whose skipper was not half as nice (or sleepy) as us and screamed at them, so they moved. We discovered then they had no windlass, that is why they did not want to have to re-anchor by hand in the dark. 

In the meantime, the same catamaran that had hit Sweet Tides the night before started approaching them again and touched them. We overheard on the radio that their cat had warned them of the danger, so they weighed their anchor and anchored well away. In the meantime another small boat dragged and became very close friends with Sweet Tides, but he continued dragging and left them. While all of this was happening, Sweet Tides' crew were peacefully asleep!!!

The wind has turned again and hopefully there will be no more close encounters!!

Stuck, stuck, stuck

We were hoping to leave today, and we didn't, it was windy in the morning, we might have made it had we decided to go in the afternoon, but we didn't. Tomorrow was going to be better, it's not. It will be very windy again. The worst part is leaving Nassau to the Berries, where we have to cross the Tongue of the Ocean, which is open sea. Once we are in Chubb we have about 80 miles on the banks which can be done even if it's windy. And then we have the Gulf Stream. If we do not leave tomorrow, and it seems very unlikely, then our window is being slammed on our faces and we might have to stay stuck even longer. Not good.

As it is, we will leave Saturday very early and do as much as we can, overnights and all and see what happens. However if the weather gets too nasty we may have to stay stuck and I will fly to Miami on the 29th.

Hopefully it will not come to that!