5/09/2012-5/16/2012

Well, we obviously didn't get away from West End as we had planned. It turned out that there was a leak in the winch installation over Bill's side of the bed. We decided since we were paid up in West End there was no need to go to Nassau and have to pay dockage there while we took the winch off and remounted it. It took us a couple of days to do it since it rained some while we were doing it but it is all fixed and we had a true test of our job today when it rained some here in Nassau.

We left West End 0800Tuesday morning, 5/15/12, with minimal wind and any that there was came from the direction we were going initially. But after about four hours our direction and the winds let us at least motor sail until just before night set in. We had skirted one large storm front and we just clipped the end of it as it went by. There was no real wind in it and we got only mild rain for about 10 minutes. W got lucky on that one and we continued to be lucky the whole way to Nassau. There were storm systems all around us and we had lightning shows in most of them but every time we looked above up there were only stars. We had taken all of the sails in at sundown since they weren't really doing us much good and the little help they were would be quickly overshadowed by the need to take them down if one of the storms got us. We motored along in less than 10kts of wind on the nose basically with the seas only 0-2 feet. Not a bad passage except for nervously watching the surrounding storms. When we checked in here at the Nassau Harbor Club Marina the staff was surprised that we had missed all of the them. Luck was with us again on this passage.

When we arrived around 1100 (we had to hang outside the port for an hour before port control gave us permission to enter - lots of cruise and commercial ships coming in) and were coming into the slip, someone called out "Hello, Eos". And there was Paul from Cavalier! He and Donna were on our dock at Brunswick Landing Marina with us for several months until she went back to Canada and then Paul was there for sometime after that before he and his brother headed to the Bahamas where Donna flew down and met them. They have been here a while and are working on getting their US visas (they are Canadian) so they will be here while we are. What a joy it was to see them again and we expect to have some enjoyable times with them over the next several days. Then later in the morning as we were getting ready to try to catch up on our sleep from the overnighter a boat came into the slip across the finger from us and it was Cricket. We had met Pam and Ben at Tiger Point. They have been in the Caribbean and are now working their way back to the States. Another sailing couple we are more than glad to reconnect with. We had always heard what a small world it could be in the cruising community and now we are believers.

So here we are in Nassau and plan to be here a few days. We just found out from Paul and Donna that there is a wine tasting, art and jazz festival at the local botanical gardens on Sat so we are going to hang around for that. The weather may not be too good for moving this week-end anyway. Then it is off to the Exumas.