A Weekend in Marsh Harbour - 2017

Apr 22 & 23

--Blogpost written by Bob

This blogpost covers our weekend in Marsh Harbour after arriving from Hope Town and before leaving for Great Guana Cay.

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Marsh Harbor at dusk on Friday, April 21, 2017.  

This morning, Saturday, April 22, there is a nice cool 12 to 14-knot breeze out of the east as we are anchored here in 8 feet of water in Marsh Harbour.  It is very quiet except for rhythmic gurgling that the dinghy producing as it rides over the 3-inch high wavelets on the harbor's surface.

The way we have the chart plotter setup, when the boat is in motion
it reads head up (what is forward of the boat is at the top of the
screen) but when the boat is motionless like this morning at
anchor it defaults to north up.  Our chart plotter makes
navigation easy.  Twenty-five years ago when I
was in the Bahamas devices like
these weren't available.

One of my weekend projects was repairing the shower grate.  The grate was mistakingly positioned (after cleaning) so that when I stepped on it a couple weeks ago, the end board broke off.  This happened previously--several years ago and I repaired it then too.  

The repaired shower grate is sitting on the starboard
cockpit seat prior to re-installing.

We went out for lunch at Wally's Restaurant in Marsh Harbour, which has always had excellent food.  We've gone a couple of times now.  I tried their special of the day, chicken souse (rhymes with "mouse").  It is similar to a stew but it is water-based.  Chicken pieces are boiled with potatoes and carrots (and probably some celery and onions) until everything is soft.  It was very good but the chicken parts were very small, almost like a Cornish game hen or a pigeon.  I'm not sure that I would order it again.

This is chicken souse--a traditional Bahamian "saturday" dish.

After lunch I dove under the boat just to tighten the cap screws on the shaft zinc that Maggie installed yesterday.  The cap screws are hex socket head screws--they have to be tightened with a hex wrench.  I have two sets of hex wrenches on board, both in a set with a handle.  We put a piece of line through the handle and I looped the line around my wrist a couple times so that I couldn't accidentally drop it in the water.  When I was tightening one of the cap screws, the hex wrench got stuck in the screw momentarily--it caused me to panic for a second or two since it was wrapped around my wrist and I couldn't get up for air.  Fortunately, it came loose after about 2 or 3 seconds.

The clouds rolled in during the late afternoon.  It is clear that we are going to get a lot of rain tomorrow.  We're stocked up on kindle books!

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The sky is completely overcast this morning, Sunday, April 23, as we expect it to rain all day.  The Cruiser's Net is just coming alive on channel 68 and the hot water is heating up on the galley stove.  After having delicious French toast that Maggie made using coconut bread we bought at the Island Bakery in Marsh Harbour, we organized some things on the boat as we looked for my lost stylus--it is used to make sketches on my iPad.  We never found my stylus--I know it's on the boat somewhere.

The rain started at 10:30 AM.  Cruisers, like us, are
mostly honkered down in their boats reading.

A rainy day is nice every once in a while, even in paradise.  I was hoping to use my stylus today to work on making an electronic sketch of the new outboard motor lift harness design I've been thinking about.  I guess I'll have to sketch it the old fashioned way with pencil and paper.  

The reason for a new outboard motor lift design is that the one we have is so complicated that we have to use the original instructions (turning them various ways) to take the harness off and put it back on the outboard motor.  It shouldn't be that complicated and I don't trust the one we have to last more than a year.  If the $30 motor harness fails, it could drop our $2700 outboard motor into the water.  Also, the harness occasionally gets in the way of the starter pull cord--I would like to make my new design removable for when the engine is in use.

This is Captain Jack's idea of what to do on a
rainy day (or a sunny day for that matter).

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Tomorrow we head for Great Guana Cay--it's only 7-1/2 miles away, across the Sea of Abaco.  Stay tuned...


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