On Wednesday morning, as predicted, the wind picked up and moved to the southeast, but the anchorage was still comfortable and it was pleasant to be onboard. This was just before sunrise.
The nice thing about the cooler water was that it slowed down the growth on the bottom and waterline (compared to the warmer waters in Panama), but it still needed to be regularly done. Eric donned a full wetsuit and did water line with our battery operated waterproof scrubber tool.
The sky looked like a massive bird just before the sun peeked over the horizon on Monday, March 31.
Yesterday morning, the wind was back down to 9 knots when we got up in the morning. The motion in the anchorage was pleasant compared to previous days, but there was still a notable amount of motion. It rained periodically for the entire day. The showers usually passed quickly, and several were quite hard rains.
In a previous post, we’d mentioned that we’d (relatively) recently bought new refrigerator and freezer units. We bought one dedicated freezer unit, where both drawers are only freezers. We bought two combo units: each unit has two drawers, and each of the drawers can be set to be either refrigerator or freezer independent of the other drawer. Since leaving San Diego in December, we’ve had all four drawers set to refrigerator mode.
Continue readingWhen we woke up on Tuesday, March 25, we saw that the storm had not hit yet. It was an unusual dawn, with the colors darker than normal.
Eric checked the forecast; the storm was still on its way, and now it was supposed to be even bigger than what had been predicted yesterday. The barge was still there, too. On the radio net, someone said the barge was waiting for a tow boat to come rescue them.
It was the hottest and most humid day that we’ve had in the Bahamas. It was so hot that we broke down and turned on the AC – it was the first time that we’d run it since arriving in the Bahamas.
Eric was still hesitant to turn the Zeus back on. He decided to only turn the power on, and didn’t run it. The first thing it did was demand a software update in order to operate.
On Monday, March 24, the crescent moon was still shining brightly despite the cloud cover as dawn started.
Dawn was spectacular
This morning, Eric called ARCO again and managed to get through to a customer service person. This time, the customer service person did send the schematics over to Eric and told Eric to check the regulator setting to make sure that it was set to Viktron. Eric spent the day mulling over whether it was wise to turn the Zeus box back on.
Continue readingFriday, March 21 — The Nordhavn 68 in this photo was named Stella Luna, and we got this great shot of her under the brightly glowing, half-full luna at dawn.
Like yesterday, the wind was low and the bay was calm, so after we finished school and chores, we headed out to go snorkeling with some other families. Our rendezvous spot was at the southwestern tip of Stocking island.
As we had briefly mentioned back in December, we (relatively) recently upgraded our dinghy. We’d had a Gig Harbor hard shell sailing/rowing dinghy with a Torqueedo 503 electric motor with 1.5 horsepower. We also had 50-watt solar panels to charge the motor when we had it out, which were made by Torqueedo. We were very happy with those solar panels.
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