Lunch at The Rusty Anchor and a Turtle on Great Exuma Island, Bahamas

When 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.

Continue reading

Photos of George Town/Preparing for Storms in the Exuma Islands, Bahamas

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 reading

Snorkeling in Elizabeth Harbour, Exuma Islands, Bahamas

Friday, 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.

Continue reading

Calabash Anchorage, Long Island to Elizabeth Harbour, Exuma Islands, Bahamas

On Friday, March 14, starting at 0100 and lasting until 0500, there had been a full moon eclipse. Had we stayed up and the clouds cooperated, we probably could have seen it from here. But chose not to. When we awoke, the eclipse was fully over and the moon was shining like a spotlight.

Dawn:

Continue reading