Monday 5 January 2020
Like we used to joke about in the army, raincoats on, raincoats off. Our plan had been to leave this morning and head to the Exumas by way of Nassau but a check of the weather this morning forecast that there was going to be the start of another blow just as we were going to be arriving at our destination in two days. Given our luck with weather on this cruise so far I have decided that was a bridge too far. We then looked at going just as far as Nassau but there aren’t too many good anchorages there and I didn’t want to be ship bound for 2-3 days again. That plus the least expensive marina we could find is 30% more expensive than here at Bimini Blue. The third alternative is to leave here tomorrow after a full week’s stay and head over to Bullock’s Harbour in the Berrys to hunker down and ride it out. We have elected door number three only do it today as long as we can get a dock space. There are anchorages we can stop off at until there is one.

Ok. Scream!

Pardon me while I bang my head against the wall. As we set off this morning, we weren’t even an hour out and hadn’t even passed the northern part of North Bimini when I noticed that the engine was running warmer and the oil pressure was lower. At first I put that to warmer waters and perhaps it was. It might also have been a blockage in the raw water intake, but no, there was still loads of water coming through the exhaust. Then I thought that it might be something as simple as there not being enough coolant in the water jacket but I can’t check that when the engine was running. Then I noticed that the engine RPM had decreased. The only other time that had happened was with Polly Perkins and was due to a clogged fuel filter. We have a pre-filter system on Nelleke and it should have been a simple matter of switching over to the backup filter. Then I remembered that I had already done this some time in the past. When you switch from one to the other you are supposed to clean out and replace the dirty one but I guess that was one of those supposedta that I didn’t.

Du-oh!

Sigh!

Drat!

Back to Blue Water Marina at Alice Town where I get to wait for the engine to cool so I can check the coolant levels and get down into the engine compartment and change the fuel filters. Of course, by the time all that is done we will have missed the window to proceed and will be storm stayed here for another three or four days. The problem with this is that I have no one to blame but myself.

Barb and I are having some serious war council discussions about our immediate future. We will let you know what we decide when we make up our minds.