April 17th... Hope Town

We were going to leave today but the wind was still at 20 from the north outside so it made sense to stay put. I waxed the starboard side of the topsides this morning while Kathy worked on stainless. I feel better finishing the waxing. I started last week and didn't know if the job was ever going to be finished. It's not a great but better than nothing ... and looks clean. We have a couple
more hours to do on the stainless but things seem to be ship shape for the most part.

Steve and Kim came over this morning for a book exchange and we made a date for lunch a restaurant down the beach a ways. We hiked the road there and had a nice lunch on the beach... I had a jerked chicken sandwich and mac and cheese just out of the oven. Kathy had a grilled cheese ... her stock order in most places. As we were leaving Steve and Carol showed up and walked the beach back to town.... we did make the mistake of stopping at another beach place on the way back for an hour or so.

Back at town, we made a stop at the grocery before returning to the boat.


We will be pulling out of Hope Town tomorrow morning on the tide and don't really know where we're going but most of our options are only about 12 miles so it's not a real problem.




April 16th...Hope Town

Still windy and cool... During the morning Jim and Jean from "Estelle" stopped over for a visit. We invited them back in the afternoon for drinks along with Steve and Carol which meant that most of our morning was spent cleaning up the boat. We had leftovers for lunch and then went to shore for a walk and a trip to the store. We headed north from town along the coast on the only road . There were some older homes and cottages. Some were well kept but most showed some neglect.

Back at the boat we did a little more cleaning and put together a cheese dish that we got from Kris on "Tilt". They ended up being greasier that I'd remembered but tasted fine.

We had a nice time chatting with "Estelle" and "Restless" while the sun drifted under the horizon.

April 15th....Hope Town

We are safely on a mooring here in Hope Town and probably did less today that any day on the trip. It was windy and cool. I did track down a rattle that we have noticed lately when running the engine at low rpms. It did mean taking everything out of the Lazarette and crawling in... but finding and fixing the problem was a small task. The exhaust pipe which is 2 inch galvanized pipe was bouncing against the hull. A wedge solved the problem at least temporarily.

I baked a batch of peanut butter cookies to warm the boat up during the morning ... the temperature was hovering around 70 which is cool for we thin blooded folks.

In the afternoon we ventured to shore for a walk but returned shortly to get back to our books.