Friday and today we spent getting things set aboard for next week’s weather. We expect wind building from 20 to 30 knots Monday and Tuesday, backing off to 25 knots Wednesday and Thursday with a chance of squalls to 35 knots throughout. Since businesses close here Sunday, we wanted to get everything we thought we’d need for a bit by today.

Also, the resort we can dinghy to still has no extra water and is not yet offering laundry service. So we rented a car again, from noon to noon. We picked it up at noon on Friday. Bud took me to the dock nearest the car rental place and I walked up to get the car. I had Fuzzy in the frontpack. It’s been blowing at above 15 knots for several days, and this wind has a southerly component, so the anchorage here is pretty bumpy. So I had Fuzzy in the pack and climbed up the ladder on the dock with him. Bud went back to the boat and got our huge bundles of laundry off the deck and took the dinghy to the beach at the head of the bay. I drove the car down there and walked back the path to the beach and helped schlep the laundry back to the car. I also brought more books for the book exchange at the resort. We got directions to the laundry and took off.

The laundry, like many businesses here, had no sign. It’s a good thing we had directions as it was a small, white cinderblock building behind some apartments on a side road. You would never find it without asking. It was small, with only about 6 or 7 washers and 5 dryers. We had 5 loads of wash, so I thought we’d be all day getting it done. But this is the Bahamas. The proprietor showed us which washers to start with. By the time we had the first two loads going, three more washers were free, so we got all our clothes in washers. We were outside talking to some other cruisers who had been doing their laundry, and they said the proprietor would swing your clothes from the washers to the driers if you left the money with him. So we left him our quarters and our drier sheets and took off to go get lunch. And the laundry was only $2 a load to wash and $2 a load to dry, unbelievably cheap for the Bahamas.

We tried to stop at Max’s Conch Bar for lunch by the place was packed. We decided to get some of our other stuff done and come back. Bud cleaned out the canned Kulik beer at the cheap liquor store (only $42 a case, but only half a case left). He had to supplement with Budweiser because that was the only beer in cans they had left. We stopped at the phone company so I could see if I could get a Bahama Telephone Company (BaTelCo) chip for my Verizon phone, I couldn’t, but I bought a cheap phone so folks with SKYPE can call us on that phone. We can also make local calls. That took a while and the Conch Bar still looked crowded so we decided to make our lunch an early supper and go get our clothes. They were just finishing up when we got back.

We finally did get to eat at Max’s. The photo is Bud at the now very uncrowded Max’s Conch Bar. The food was okay, but really didn’t compare to Tryphena’s at Club Thompson Bay, which has our vote as best Bahamian food so far. We drove south a ways so I could get a shot of sightseeing, but when we got back it was too late to do our shopping. By the time we got the laundry hauled down to the beach it was dark. The wind was down so we did the trip in one load, going very slowly, and didn’t get wet. We had the laundry packed in black plastic garbage bags, just in case.

This morning we did the shopping. The car was parked off to the side of the little road that heads back to Indian Point at the north end of the bay. Today we left Fuzzy on the boat. We took an early wet trip in with Fuzzy, so we planned to again make two trips back. We beached the dinghy and drove the couple of miles to put gas in the rental car and get another 10 gallons of water. Then we stopped at the store and got groceries.

We had two large and three small bags of groceries and two 5 gallon jugs of water. Everything had to be carried back down the path to the beach. I put a picture in the gallery (now another new album) of the rental parked by the path entrance, which is marked, as so many are, with the ubiquitous plastic jugs found washed up on all the beaches. The path is only about 500 feet long, but when you go back and forth on it a few times, it adds up. We loaded up the dingy and I helped push Bud off into the little waves and I drove the car back to the rental place. They just had me leave it parked there, unlocked, with the keys under the mat. They were closing the auto repair part of the business and the guy who ran the rentals would be by sometime to move it.

I walked back down the little lane to the dock and Bud picked me up. He had taken the groceries aboard and put the perishables away. He wore full foul weather gear for this trip. I had my foul weather jacket and put it on. We didn’t get wet, except for sweating inside our jackets.

Now we’re all ready for the blow. If it wasn’t for taking Fuzzy ashore we wouldn’t have to get off the boat until the wind dies down sometime next week. Actually, the strongest wind is going to be from the most protected direction, so the waves we have to deal with might be at their worst in these pro-frontal winds today and early tomorrow.