Our Last 3 Days in Nassau

—Blogpost written by Bob

Monday, January 13

Today started like most other recent days here in Palm Cay Marina in Nassau but with less wind--15 to 20 knots out of the east. We have been waiting for the wind to drop into the 11 to 14 knot range before leaving for Highborne Cay in the Exumas.

The sailboat next to us in the marina is owned by
a Canadian who is both a captain and a
mechanic for the on-site
charter company.

I lightly sanded (using 180-grit sandpaper) and applied another coat of Cetol to the section of teak toe rail that I decided to touch up.  It's looking great!  (Just one more coat tomorrow morning!)

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While this has nothing to do with the Bahamas or sailing, I’ve always had a keen interest in music. At one point in my life I took guitar lessons but I don’t consider myself musically talented—in fact, I no longer have a guitar. (I’ve made a promise to myself to take it up again though.)  Lately, I have been overwhelmed by a song written by Leonard Cohen—"Hallelujah."  One of my favorite renditions of this song is by an unknown young female vocalist with an unknown guitar accompaniment in a simple setting at the bottom of a large staircase (shown below in the grainy image below). 

The grainy cover image from YouTube 
of my favorite rendition of Leonard 
Cohen's "Hallelujah."

The original song as sung by the creator, Leonard Cohen, can be found at this link. There is even a YouTube video dedicated to explaining the meaning of this song.  To me, this is one of those songs that just stick in my head—I can’t get it out of my mind!  You can call me crazy!

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Some images of the area around the marina taken today:

s/v Rainy Days was in Slip #98.

We appeared to be the only cruisers in the marina
at the moment.  (Most of the other boats
are either charter catamarans
or fishing boats.)

The lap pool and the Ink Bar.

The residences just to the north of the marina.

A large catamaran coming into the marina.

We had lunch today at the on-site restaurant, the Pink Octopus.   (Unlike yesterday, at least I got off the boat today!)

We ended our day with Happy Hour and very interesting and tasty hors d'oeuvres consisting of whole wheat RITZ crackers topped with cottage cheese and cranberry sauce.  Over Happy Hour we kidded with each other about our marina life being too plush for us to be true cruisers--I actually used the term "explorers" but that was the bushwhackers speaking.  We had a good day!

Our hors d'oeuvres with Happy Hour consisted of
RITZ crackers, topped with cream cheese
and cranberry sauce.

Tuesday, January 14

Yet another day, we were marina-bound but the high wind situation was gradually improving.

After breakfast on board, I decided to flush the pickling compound from our water maker and start to make some fresh water. I believed that the water in the marina was sufficiently clean for the purpose. Up to this point the water maker was pickled—so, I opened the seacock, primed the unit, and ran it for 30 minutes to flush out the pickling solution. Then, after taste-testing the fresh water output, I switched the output to the starboard day tank as I began making fresh water for the first time. I set an alarm so that I limited its runtime to 7 hours (to make 10 gallons of fresh water). (The day tank holds 12 gallons and I didn't yet know the accuracy of the 1.5 gallons per hour production rate.  The water maker appears to be working fine!  I had my concerns since I purchased it "used" on eBay and I didn't have a good way of testing it before leaving the Chesapeake Bay.)

The first fresh water we produced
contained 299 ppm TDS.
(and it tasted great!)

Later, we tested the marina's fresh water and found that it contained 408 ppm total dissolved solids--so the fresh water from our water maker is better quality than the marina's fresh (dockside) water!  We are very pleased with our Katydyn 40E water maker!

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Today I also lightly sanded and applied the third (and final) coat of Cetol on the section of teak toe rail that I decided to touch up.  (Later in the day, I removed the plastic masking tape.)

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Another little project I decided to undertake was fixing the problem with the starboard (green) running light on the bow.  I removed the green lens and cleaned each of the bulb’s mating surfaces with sandpaper. 

The starboard (green) running light
is now working as good as new!

After testing the reconditioned electrical contacts, I applied some dielectric silicone compound on the terminals and reassembled the light fixture.  (I don't expect that we will need our running lights anytime soon since moving around in the Exumas must be during bright sunshine so that we can see the coral heads and avoid hitting them.  It bothers me when anything doesn't work as it should.)

We emptied our composting toilet's solids container in the afternoon--this is always a fun job!  (It's really not as bad as it sounds, though I didn't take any photos to share the experience.)

Before we knew it Happy Hour was upon 
us again and we celebrated with 
bushwhackers,what else?

Wednesday, January 15

This was our last day in Palm Cay Marina and we had a lot to do: grocery shopping, preparing our boat for a 30-nm journey, and eating our last pizza for lunch in a while.

We started our water maker in the morning (7:30 AM) to make more fresh water since it is better quality than the marina's water.  Then, we used the marina's loaner car to go to the nearby grocery store (Solomon's).  We got all our groceries back to the boat by 11 AM.  (It is a harrowing experience with Maggie driving on the left side of the road!)  The only diet sodas we could find at the grocery store was Diet Coke and this situation will probably be even worse in the out islands!  (We also bought some more local rum!)

The selection of fresh vegetables was excellent.
We didn't buy any of these hot peppers but
we did get a big bag of carrots which
was a product of Canada.

We had to wait until 3 PM for pizza but it was well worth the wait! Because they don’t make pizza on Mondays and Tuesdays for some reason, the pizza station needs extra preparation that took longer than normal.

Maggie and I waiting to eat our pizza
for lunch at the Pink Octopus.

Our pizza was absolutely delicious!

Based on the current weather forecast, and our leaving Palm Cay Marina tomorrow morning, we expect to be anchored near Highborne Cay on Thursday at mid-afternoon--we will also be there on Friday, and Saturday.  On Sunday we expect to travel to Warderick Wells Cay where the Bahamas Land and Sea Park is headquartered.  

I hope to leave this blogpost with one thought:

 “The greatest risk in life is to live a riskless life.” 

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