Suki is home!
20 February 2015
• Spanish Wells Bahamas
by Mike
Huzzah!
Suki Suzuki is back home and ready for business. As with too many women, her problem was in her lower unit with a transmission gearing rounded and allowing her drive to slip when put into gear. The mechanic fixed it by canibalizing his old Johnson 2.5 4 stroke, which is the same engine only painted white. I wasn't aware that Suzuki built the smaller four strokes for Johnson, nor was I aware that Suzuki is owned by a good Canadian company, Bombardier, in North America. So, in bringing Suki into the family, I was buying Canadian! The bill was exceptionally reasonable with only 2 hours of labour and the only parts he charged me for were the ones off the shelf. In other words, the one part that was absolutely necessary to make the fix, was free! The mechanic's name is Coach. Thanks, Coach!
I also found out what the problem is with the water here. Most houses are on "town" water which is piped over from the big Island of Eluthera and over the last while this water has been excessively salty. The speculation is that somewhere there is a break or at least damage done to the pipe. The question in my mind is, why haven't they fixed it? Most homes have gone to dug wells (yes, Spanish Wells has good water in the water table), their own reverse osmosis system, rain catchment and cisterns or simply buying water. The town water is only good for showering or washing dishes although I wouldn't even use it for that, myself. I must say that we are very grateful for the water maker on this trip!
The weather looks like Sunday will be our departure day. It'll be a beam reach south under strong but not dangerous winds with No 3 jib and mizzen. We aren't 100% sure of our first destination but with will have Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, according to the current forecast, before the next bit of nasty comes through on Thursday. I rather expect that the whole marina will empty that morning as some of us head south and others head north so we should have another, final, party for the boats that are here. The only question is what boat to hold it on. One of the bigger power boats would be best for simple accommodation but we'll have to see if they are prepared to do it.
A few more purchases at the grocery store being mindful of the fact that a lot of the places we will be stopping at are simple anchorages with no shoreside facilities, in fact, nothing ashore at all other than lovely beaches, iguanas, swimming pigs and such, so we need to be reasonably self sufficient.
Our return trip may not be along Andros after all as it is at about the same lines of latitude as the Exumas. I guess we will make the decision based on the wind direction and forecasts. If the winds are out of the east we will poke along the Exumas, if they are out of the west the Andros will get the nod. The idea will be to be sailing in the lee of island group to minimize the fetch.
One positive point about the marina - there are few enough boats here that there is little contention for the wifi service and we can most often get on with no problem. There is one boat that came in 48 hours ago and it has a wifi amp and their own server aboard and you can tell when they are active. Suddenly, no one else gets much of the bandwidth. Very frustrating.
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