off the hook travels...: January 2012

Well, on Sunday, January 22nd we crossed from Miami to Bimini, Bahamas. It was a little rough, but nothing too terrible. Tony didn't fish, though. We hoisted our yellow quarantine flag and headed to Blue Water Marina.

We fill out allll the proper paperwork and Tony is the only one allowed to leave the boat. He walks down the street to Customs & Immigration and gets us checked in. Looks like they're going to let us stay :). We get to take down the yellow flag and put up the visitor's Bahamian flag that must be flown at all times, along with our American flag.

We work on getting more things settled and around 5pm decide to head down to the Big Game Club for some dinner. Very cool place and we both had the Mahi Ruebon. Yummy.

We're almost done with dinner and glance outside... there is a two story apartment building on fire!!! Tony runs down to see if there is a way to help. It was like nobody knew what to do. They called the island Fire Department (which is a small work truck). They show up and are having to put these hoses together and run them to the harbor water... then tried to get them primed and going. During this time, the fire was getting out of control, the winds were whipping, and there were men on the roofs of homes with tiny water hoses trying to wet down their own homes in hopes of the fire not spreading. After several hours, the fire was contained. The apartment building housed around 30 people-- it was burnt to the ground along with everything these people owned. Nobody was hurt.

Tony and I got back to the boat pretty quick in case we needed to pull out of there. We're sitting in flybridge watching everything and notice our forward bilge pump goes off... which is weird. Tony goes down to have a look...

Not only is there water in there, but it has an oil sheen to it. What in the world? He checks the engine room... all good. He takes a look where the water maker is... there's no oil, but holy crap there is a crack in the pvc pipe and we are losing all our fresh water!! To work we go. I start filling anything I can find with our water in hopes to save what we can, while Tony goes to work on a fix. We also found where the oil was coming from... one of our extra containers of oil had cracked and was leaking out.

By 10 or 11pm, we had it worked out... going to bed!! :)

Hello everybody! This is the first chance we've had to get Internet, so... I have a lot of catching up to do for you. Although there are many stories and "excitement" to tell already, I will probably blaze through to get you to where we are now.

As everybody knows, Christmas day talks with Jody and Renee about a weekend boat trip turned into a definite boat trip- leaving out in 4 days! The cherry on top of this is that Tony wants to keep going and head on to the Bahamas. OMG! ;-) I can’t even begin to list the things that must be done before then. It took us months of planning last Bahamas trip. Will it happen?

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011. I have absolutely NO idea how we pulled it off, not really even sure if we HAVE actually pulled it off, but we managed to get things… well... at least done enough that we feel okay to pull out tomorrow. It was pretty late this night, but we piled our stuff on the boat, which we will sort out and put away as we travel. We spent night on the boat and planned to pull out around 9am the next morning.

Thursday, December 29th. We woke up to 23 degrees this morning. Not only were the docks frozen and icy, so was our boat! Taylor came to visit and see us off at 8am. You should have seen her sliding down the icy boat ramp. We finished loading things from the car to the boat.

Loved Taylor goodbye extra good and we pulled out of MBYC at 11am. We are headed to Butler Island and Jody/Renee/Kassidy are following in their boat. We have planned to anchor for the night at Butler Island, one of our favorite anchor spots. We all got there, got rafted up together, and commenced to chillin’. It was pretty cold, so we decided not to grill. Instead we had salad, pizza, and French fries…yumm. And of course a good time socializing.
As usual, you can’t boat without something to go wrong or needing to be fixed seems like all the time. As we make our way to Butler the port engine starts losing its connection to the throttle. Yeah, that can be as bad as it sounds, especially when you’re running wide open. We thought we had this fixed, but….! Also, Tony went down to check out the engine room to make sure everything was looking okay. And there was a spray of water coming from the prop shaft. Can you say an exaggerated sheeeeeesh!?!? But, by the time we made it to Butler Island, it seemed to have quit the leaking.

Friday, December 30th. We are easy going this morning. Jody and Renee fixed a gourmet breakfast (I LOVE when they do this). We had bacon, pancakes, eggs… and did I mention bacon? We ate, piddled with some “to do’s”, and then decided to make a short trip to Georgetown, SC, stay at the downtown marina and check out the little town. So, we untie, pull up anchor and head that way. –Tony switched wires with throttle. –made it to marina. –did quick boat wash. –showered. –walked in town. –had dinner

Saturday, December 31st. Tony and I said goodbye to Jody, Renee, and Kassidy and pulled out at 8am headed for Charleston for New Year’s. We made reservations the day before at Charleston Maritime Marina. Our first time on this side of town and our first time at this marina. They informed us that they would be closed, but told us how to go in, where to go, etc. There would be nobody there to catch our lines… we’re on our own. They did give us free electricity since no one would be there to help us. Nice. We got there and tied up with zero problems. Love it when that happens. We did more to-do’s for the day and finally headed out on foot to downtown Charleston for New Year’s evening. We had a blast. This girl even gave me a must have tiara to bring in the New Year. It was sooo much fun, that apparently everybody in the Irish Pub we were in counted down to the New Year TWICE. We counted down with the ball on TV first. Then the band was on a different count, so we counted down again. Then, for whatever reason :), about 10 minutes later I looked at the time, looked at Tony and said "Heyyy, we missed the countdown to the New Year". I had "forgotten". LOL.

Sunday, January 1, 2012!! HAPPY NEW YEAR! We pulled out this morning and headed to Tom Point Creek anchor spot- just before Beaufort, SC. We got there early and got anchored. We absolutely love the place. We were the only boat there. We grilled out, chilled and enjoyed. We were quite close to the “hill”, but according to the winds and tides, we anticipated both pulling us away from the hill and swing into the middle overnight. Well….. never assume, I guess. We wake up to an odd sound about 2am. Step out to take a look and find that we did NOT swing the other way. Instead, we kept going into the hill where there was a couple of knotty old moss trees. These knotty old moss trees now had our starboard outrigger in a clamp hold and bent down pretty good. Tony starts the engines and pulls up to get us out. We got out, but it did break a couple of wires on the outriggers. Bummmmmer! We will be ordering parts to get that fixed. The rest of the night was all good.

Monday, January 2, 2012. After that exciting night, we woke up the next morning and checked weather. It was supposed to be gusty winds- up to 45mph. We decided to pull up anchor and check out a more secure place to “hide” from the winds/weather in Beaufort, SC. We anchored just south of the moorings at downtown Beaufort…made SURE our anchor was dug in and hunkered down for the bad weather. It’s supposed to be quite rough until Wednesday, so we planned to stay here until Wed morning. We set our anchor alarm for the night too. We can set a radius around our boat. If we were to drift/drag outside of the parameter we set, an alarm will go off. And… you guessed it, the alarm goes off about 11pm. We jump up, look around, but we’re all good. A big barge had gone by and his waves caused us to swing a little harder. We were good to go. It’s freeeeezing. Winds were terrible!!! Bounced our boat all around all night.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012. Tony and I did rock/paper/scissors to see who was going to climb out of bed in the frrreezing cold, crank the generator and get the heat on. It’s freeeeezing. Tony got the heat going. We looked out and one of the sailboats anchored out from us had apparently drug in the night and was now lopsided on the opposite hill. Ugh…. We felt very bad for them. We had an uneventful day… got a lot of “to do’s” done. Still trying to get boat situated and find a place for alllll thisssss stufffff. Still cold all day. We finally cranked up gen set for the evening cooking time. We also needed to test out our new water maker that Tony installed. We cranked generator, turned all the stuff we needed on and then smelled something a little funny… like burning. At first we thought it might be the stove, because I turned on the opposite eye that I usually use. We blew it off for just a very few minutes. Then, it was unmistakable. Something was burning and the stove had turned off. After investigating, the gen set breaker wire was BURNT THROUGH. Omgosh! But TP is the man…. He had another huge wire and was able to make a replacement. We are all good now.

Wednesday, January 04, 2012. Pulled up anchor. It’s so cold. We decided to go on the outside today from Beaufort, SC and come in at Fernandina Beach, FL. We fueled up at Florida Petroleum. Then went about 5 more miles and dropped the hook for the night. No excitement for today… a good thing. What an awesome day and night.

Thursday, January 05, 2012. Well, I should never even say out loud what a good day with no problems we have- without knocking on wood anyway. We decide to stay inside today. Winds are blowing pretty good. We are in very skinny water and it’s low tide. Always makes me nervous. Well, we’re getting close to a bridge that we think we can get under instead of requesting an open IF we put our outriggers down. Reluctantly, due to how skinny everything is, I take over at the helm while Tony starts letting the outriggers down. We round a corner and I notice the water depth getting pretty shallow… 7 feet, 6 feet…. I call for Tony… 5 feet, 4 feet and then…. a nice soft landing onto the sand. I thought I might stroke out right then and there. We ended up having to get the dinghy down and after many many tries, we were able to pull the boat off the sand and back into the middle of the water with the dinghy. I held the boat in the middle while Tony got back on. We just pulled the dinghy behind us the rest of the way to our anchor spot. I’m done with driving on the ICW! Ugh.

Friday, January 06, 2012. Decided to go on the outside again today (NO ICW :-). Came in at Ponce de Leon in New Smyrna. Landed early and started working on all the to dos. Got to see a nice sunset... then just at dark, JoeBip, a small shrimping boat, was brought in by towboat. They anchored them just in front of us. We think they drug past us in the middle of the night….

Saturday, January 07, 2012. Left around 8:45am and decided to go on the outside again. Also decided to try to make it all the way to Stuart. The same port engine problem we’ve been having gave us trouble all along the way. Then we notice port engine is somewhat hotter than normal. Oh geesh. Tony spent some time switching wires and trying different things. We finally come in at Fort Pierce Inlet because Lucie Inlet is tough to navigate with all the shoaling. It was getting late in the day… we headed to Manatee Pocket in hopes of an anchor spot. It was pretty full. We got some local info and tried to anchor there, but couldn’t get anchor to stick. At this point it was after 5pm and we worried about sun going down. So we decided to back out to bay and anchor out. This is what we did. However, on our way out of the area, we get a call on the radio. It is none other than COCONUT Ken & Cathy!!! A couple we met in the Bahamas 2 years ago. What a great surprise. We decided to go ahead and get anchored since it was getting late and we would catch up with them tomorrow. Along with UEC and Claudia. We can’t wait.

We anchored in front of this "garage"... check it out. Nice, huh?!

Sunday, January 08, 2012. We decided to pull into Mariner’s Cay Marina back in Manatee Pocket for a couple of nights. Ken and Cathy are going to take us in their car to do a few errands tomorrow. Plus we get power and a shower and then off to Mussel Monday happy hour.

This is Ken and Cathy AND their dog Eddie

I have lost track of dates and time. We spent several more days in Stuart. Had a good time with Ken and Cathy. We had the boat engines looked at by Hinckley and stayed at their dock for a couple of days. Spent some fun time with Uncle Eddie and Aunt Claudia. They treated us way beyond good while we were there. They even let us take the Lexus and cram it slap full of groceries for the boat. Finally… we decided enough was enough...we are going to leave engines in the "test mode" that Tony has them in and just work it out as we go. We pulled out and headed to West Palm, FL. Anchored and then on to Miami to wait for a good day to cross over to Bahamas. First time to Miami. We didn't look around any.... just worked trying to get everything taken care of before we cross. Whew... talk about a time crunch. But.. I think we got it. Here are some fun Stuart pics...

Lunch one day...