Monday, April 27, 2009

After coffee, I put some apple, nut muffins in the oven for breakfast then we hoisted the main, picked up the anchor and we left around 9:00am for Great Sale Cay on the Little Bahamas Bank. The winds were a little more touchy today - on our backside, so a whisker pole would have come in handy. As it was Otto was handling it pretty well and we were doing from 5-7 knots until close to 11:00am when boingggg! The belt on Otto broke, so no more autohelm today. We have a spare belt in the back of the garage - it's just a matter of getting to it and putting it on. Wayne kept us close to the edge as far as wind and waves and other than a few jibes; it was a pretty uneventful day. Nice sailing though. I made tuna salad for lunch and practiced the conch horn. I got a nice long blow out of it while fooling around with sounds - I'll have to figure that out yet.

At sunset, I was the only one blowing the horn. There are 7 boats in here tonight. Blue Max is here - he left earlier this morning than we did and made pretty good time. Dennis came over to chat for a while before dinner. They're trying to get home by this weekend so are talking about doing a straight run tomorrow to West End, then Wednesday heading across so they can put the boat on the trailer Thursday and drive home Friday. Their plans and ours are all weather permitting of course. We're still talking about putting in at Mangrove Cay tomorrow and going to West End the following day. We may run into them still at West End if the weather predictions are correct.

After gin & tonics I made some more of that ground round/onion/mushroom mixture over mashed potatoes with corn on the side for dinner. I've decided that the stuff is definitely addicting to me... ymmmm.... Time to download my pics - Wayne took some of me playing the conch horn on the bow of the boat. If they came out, I'll post a pic on the blog.