Saint Francis
15 January 2007 | Stocking Island
Randy

It rained a bit last night which was nice. Hard to keep the foredeck clean without a good rain every once in a while. We have a deck wash down pump and hose but it is salt water. I wouldn't have it any other way but it does leave a salt residue unless we get a little rain now and then.
We had a lazy day today and spent most of the morning cleaning up and getting a shore run organized to take care of some business by phone and Internet. I can pickup the Harbor Wifi net from here but you need and ID and they never answer the radio (their home page says hail us on 69). I think I'm really starting to unwind as this sort of thing would have really frustrated me before. "How can they advertise, call us on 69, and never monitor 69? Who's running this business and how do they stay in business?!" I find myself just saying, "well ok", these days.
We met David and Tni from Rosario a brand new Beneteau 423. We had heard them on the Chris Parker weather net at 6:30 in the morning from time to time. They were anchored next to us and were leaving today so we spent a bit of time together sharing plans and talking tech. David and I are both geeks and we are both heading down to the Caribbean over the next few months. We exchanged MMSI numbers and did some position exchanges over the VHF and SSB for fun (no one else has this stuff set up!).
We also stopped by the Saint Francis resort to grab lunch and say hi to George and Gillian. They both are very harried this time of year as their shop is smack in the middle of the action. Their waitress didn't show up to work today and George indicated that this was not uncommon in the Bahamas. The Saint Francis has a sports bar and restaurant with several nice beach bungalows (the Bahamas has a hotel incentive allowing anyone with at least 5 rooms to get an otherwise difficult to acquire liquor license easily). Greg, their son, is very sharp and working on building up their wifi business. They, of course, also sell the Saint Francis 50 yachts and often have a new demo boat on the docks along with some used 44s for sale.
We capped off the day with dinner on Eyran with Alex and Ellen. It was a fun evening and we stayed up later than we normally do by far, talking and drinking coffee. Alex has the French Press wired. We do not. The French Press is the tool for coffee when you're not on AC or Genset because you just boil water (Propane only) and go, no high current coffee maker needed. Unfortunately, Hideko and I have been making a range of mud to water, so it was nice to get some formal instruction. Our coffee the next morning was perfect.