Cheryl's Notes:

Instead of wasting away in Margaritaville, we are relaxing in Staniel Cay. We found out that Watermaker Air flies in here everyday from Fort Lauderdale. They bring in passengers and air freight. We choose John's sister Debbie as our most reliable source. She purchased a new digital camera for us and is having it sent to Watermaker Air in Fort Lauderdale. We filled out all of the necessary paperwork to have it delivered here in Staniel Cay. We haven't decided whether to just hang out here until it arrives, or travel down to Black Point to do some laundry and then head back to pick up our delivery. Things are very laid back here. The yacht club will just hold our package until we come back to collect it.

We have met some really great people here as we wait. Today we met a couple that are not only from the Twin Cities, but they kept their former boat up on Lake Superior in Cornucopia. We drove through there every weekend on our way to Bayfield. We know some people in common. Our friend Bruce even showed them some boats. They ended up buying a Valiant 40 out of Detroit. They are Craig and Sue on Stolen Moments. It is also their first trip to the Bahamas. We also ran into Jim and Leslie from Just Limin' today. We first met them in Fort Lauderdale. They are on a brand new Catalina 375, which replaced the Catalina 36 in production. We are now all anchored in the same bay in front of Big Majors Spot.

On Sunday, the winds were supposed to be strong out of the west. This would have made our anchorage a little lumpy, but the winds ended up being very calm. We stayed on the boat all day, and spent some time snorkeling around cleaning the bottom. We are in pretty good shape, but we did notice that the zinc on the end of the prop shaft is almost completely gone. We don't have the right gear to change it ourselves. We are hoping to run into another boat with dive gear and try to trade services. Maybe we can find someone with a sweet tooth and I can trade a fresh pan of brownies for changing our zinc.

We have been paying to use the internet. It isn't blazing fast, but it serves the purpose. When you log on to the service they give specific instructions on how to get the "blazing" fast connection. You log in and click on a site, take a drink of your Kalik, and keep repeating step two until the connection appears to be blazing fast. The owner of the local service was told that he has a great idea going and that he should spread it to other islands. "Why would I do that" he replied, "then I would have to hire employees and work harder."

John's Notes:

What's the hurry mon, you are already here. That being said, what's the hurry. I could stay here for months. I would love to hang around the yacht club and have a few beers every afternoon talking with the new arrivals. The only problem with that is that beers are $4.00 each. Cheryl bought a loaf of home made bread today that costs $6.00. I think she is going to take baking serious again. Maybe we will only stay a couple of weeks or until our new camera arrives. Or until we run out of beer and bread.

There really is nothing better than just laying around practicing doing nothing. I'm getting better every day. I've run into people down here though that are far more experienced than I am. Take today, I woke up with absolutely nothing to do and was convinced that I would have half of that done before happy hour. Here it is almost 2:00PM and I'm way behind. Ok, ok, I'm going to push on. I'm going to work............on my TAN! KALIK! (for those of you that don't know, Kalik is the local beer) KALIK!

Every day gets harder and harder. Yesterday we were only able to put in an 11-hour day. That may be because we got up at 9:00AM and went to bed at 8:00PM................

The winds are supposed to be really bad this weekend from the W, WSW. We are not in a good anchorage for that. Not sure where we are going to try and hide out. We could go further south but we have to be back here next week to get our new camera. We don't want to go to far but don't want to ride out bad weather either. There is a marina nearby but they aren't giving slips away at $2.25/ft per night. Too many of those will eat a big hole in your cruising budget.