Michael, who owns and runs Long Island Breeze, also runs the cruisers net on the VHF radio here. Yesterday he asked for interest in having his place open on Sunday (like everything else in the Bahamas, he’s usually closed on Sunday) for the NFL playoff games. I didn’t hear any formal poll, but this morning he announced that he would open at 2:30 and stay open for the games.

I mentioned yesterday that he had lost the sand off his beach (well, it’s really just the back yard of his resort as there’s a wall between it and the bay, but it’s supposed to be covered in sand). Some of the cruisers were helping him move sand yesterday, as he has a sprained ankle. They asked if anyone wanted to come in today at 10:30 to continue and we agreed. Then on the morning net someone came on and suggested that cruisers come in at 12:30, shovel sand for a couple of hours and stay for the game. Bud and I had planned to come in at 10:30, in any case we decided to go back to the boat in between sand detail and the game because we wanted to bring Fuzzy in for a while and we couldn’t bring him in to the restaurant part where the game would be showing. So we ended up going in at about 11:30. None of the other cruisers were here yet, so Bud worked alone. I helped rake what he had moved in the wheelbarrow, but spent most of the time with Fuzzy. We worked until about 1:30 and then took Fuzzy back. We both went swimming and washed and rinsed with the cockpit shower. The wind is down so the water was clear, but it was chilly. We gave Fuzzy his Prozac early and took off for the Long Island Breeze. Michael gave us our first round of drinks on the house to say thank you for the work. By the time we got back the whole beach area was finished. I took a couple of photos that I’ll post in the gallery.

It’s now the third quarter of the Baltimore-New England game. Michael has a good crowd here. At one point Bud counted 50 people. I tried to capture the mood with this photo. There are groups of people all over and computers everywhere, as you do need to come ashore here to use the computer. Most people seem to know folks in other boats, but these are all new people to us. We each have an order of grouper fingers and fries coming. We were going to have pizza, but they sold out. We’re glad to see him doing so well, as this is a bit off the beaten track (although it seems to be gaining in popularity) and Michael and his wife are really nice and we’d like to see the place prosper. Anyway, I’m going to post this now, while I can. We’ll be here a few days and I’ll probably only post from here every second or third day, as I don’t like to haul the computer ashore. So if you miss the photos, check back, I’ll be adding them.