Cruising on a sailboat has its great times and it's not so great times. Things break, many times in the middle of the night. A few nights ago, I woke up at 1:00 AM to an alarm sounding. Not a real loud alarm so I knew it wasn't critical. After a bit of looking around, I figured out it was the refrigerator temperature was over 42 deg F. Out came the multimeters for checking voltage and current. The frig compressor was not running. An hour later after cleaning and jiggling wire connections and the mechanical thermostat inside the frig, it was running. Over the last few days it has cycled between 31 and 36 deg F which is good. Not really sure what caused it to start running again which is a bit scary.

Over the last month we have actually sailed about 70% of the time. Last year, it was rare that we just sailed. We always seemed to need to get some place and the wind did not cooperate. This year, we "have no agenda" other than to have fun so we are picking were we go to allow the wind to help.

Friends from Houston on Migration and Helios finally found a weather window after waiting over a month in Marathon FL. and are now in the Bahamas. Migration delivered a wind turbine and other parts that I purchased and had shipped to his boat in Marathon. It turns out the turbine I chose had a mounting post that slide inside the support mast. My support mast was 1/8" to small on the inside diameter. After trying several different methods, I spent 6 hours one afternoon with a drill, 1.5" diameter hole saw, and 80 grit sand paper and "bored" out the tube 3" deep to make it fit. Paul from 2 Outrageous helped me mount and pivot the wind turbine up into place. (see photos in photo gallery) Of course, the wind had been blowing 15 to 20 knots and now went to under 10 once the turbine was in place. The more wind, the more power produced by the turbine so we were not getting much power.

We had meet Tom and Cindy on Oppsea at Rudder Cut Cay several weeks ago and would see them at different anchorages. 2 Outrageous, Migration, Helios, and MiJoy wanted to get away from the 300 plus boats in Georgetown and get some place where we could use our pole spears to harvest dinner. Oppsea also wanted to get away and became part of the group. With unusual winds out of the NE for several days, the SW side of the Exuma island chain looked to be a good remote area protected from the wind. To get there easily in one day, we needed to slipped thru Hog Cay Cut. At low tide, the water depth is around 4 feet and the boats draft between 4' 7" and 5' 4". That means waiting for high tide. Once we cleared North Channel Rock waypoint on the South passage out of Elizabeth Harbour/Gtown area, we were able to sail nicely for about an hour and a half. We got to the cut early, MiJoy chose to anchor hoping to maybe dive on some coral heads but the 15 knots of wind were creating waves too big to comfortably dive. Others sailed back and forth pulling fishing plugs until time to run the cut. 2 Outrageous is always ready to lead the way and made it thru the tricky part of the cut were the rocks could chew up a hull very badly. They then tried to explore a slightly different path after the cut and found water just a couple of inches too shallow and managed to run their keel into just enough sand to stop forward or reverse progress. The other 4 boats now had a very good indicator of where not to go. 20 minutes later, the tide had risen enough to lift 2 Outrageous off the sand and they were free.
We sailed 6 miles NW in the lee of Little Exuma with waves dropping from 1.5' to 2' on the windward side of Little Exuma to a light chop on the leeward side but still with 15 knots of wind. We tucked into an anchorage with 9 foot plus of water where charts said we would have less than 5.
The next day, the girls went to the beach and the guys went hunting for fish and lobster. Hunting was very successful. 2 Outrageous had caught a Mahi Mahi on the sail South of Georgetown and offered their boat and the fish for dinner. The Mahi and lobster were grilled, and all the boats contributed a dish and a feast was had by all. Charlie brought his guitar and I brought my harmonicas. Paul got out his harmonica and played along a bit. We spent over an hour singing songs from "our" early years. There were even discussions of the ten of us singing a song at the Exuma Regatta talent show.

Winds swung a bit further South a couple of days earlier than was originally expected and the anchorage was getting a bit rough as the winds were now out of the East. We motored 4 hours pretty much directly into the wind thru Comer Channel to Long Island. We have now spent a couple of days here, walking the beach, meeting other boaters, joining a work party to help local residents and not finding fish or lobster the one time we have gone out. There's always tomorrow.

Tomorrow has come and gone. We have gotten 6 or so lobsters and a few fish. Charlie's is one of the biggest we have speared. See picture in galley.
And the wind has picked back up ranging from 12 to 20 knots. Each amp of 12-volt DC electricity we use has to be replaced. Our refrigerator insulation appears to be saturated with moisture. The compressor pulls 6 amps and runs about 80% of the time. It should run slower so it pulls only 4 amps and runs half the time but the frig will not stay cold at that setting. That's over 65 amp hours from when the sun no longer chargers the batteries till the next morning just for the frig. Freezer, lights etc. use another 60 or so, down 120 to 130 amp hours. With the wind turbine and 12 knots of wind, when we get up in the morning the battery bank is down 70 to 100 amp hours. Less than before the wind turbine was installed. We are not having to run the diesel generator every morning to bring the batteries up to charge. Less diesel consumed, less gen set hours and therefore less oil changes on the gen set so a bit less work for Mike.

Many thanks to Joyce for cleaning up all the mess I made boring out the mast for the wind generator and other projects. What I bored out is the equivalent of converting a 1/16" aluminum plate that is 3" by 4.5" into little bits of dust. More projects to work on. Rarely a dull moment.