George Town, Bahamas - Part 3

Not much has changed since the last time I posted.  We are anchored back over by the Monument.  (I guess they call this Hamburger Beach.)  On Tuesday, New Year's Eve, we went over to a bonfire and potluck at Flip Flop Beach - which is about a mile dinghy ride north of where we are anchored (everything is really spread out here!!!).  A mile isn't really that far if you have a good dinghy and it's daylight.  We headed over there in daylight, but of course, it was dark when we left.  I mean, come on, it was New Year's for goodness sakes! We had to stay out late.  (BTW, this was only the 2nd time we've been out after dark.)  We thought our dinghy was pretty decent.  We bought it right before we went cruising 4 years ago.  However, after realizing that mice got at it in our garage, we had to have it repaired a couple of years ago.  Now one of those patches has a very slow leak in the inflatable floor, and we have to keep pumping it up.  When the floor isn't hard enough, it's difficult to get the dinghy on a plane (which avoids getting wet), and keep the dinghy on a straight course. Blah, blah, blah.  At least now the engine runs great - yeah Steve!

It was pretty funny trying to find our boat in the dark.  Even though we have lights in the cockpit, it was still difficult to distinguishing which boat was ours.  There weren't even that many boats over here at the time either.  We did manage to get home safely after the ball dropped at 9:00 p.m. - cruiser's midnight.  The ball was a volleyball decorated with lights and strung up a tree.

Wednesday, we cleaned the boat a little in the morning, and went to a Bahamian Regatta in the afternoon.  This was an even longer dinghy ride across Elizabeth Harbor to the Fish Fry (probably 2 miles or so).  We ate lunch at one of the little shack-type restaurants and hung out with other cruisers.  To be honest, we didn't pay too much attention to the race.

On Thursday, making water turned out to be an all-day affair.  Since the tank was so low, we ended up running the water maker about 5 hours (that's about 100 gallons of water).  This pretty much filled our tank 3/4 of the way since we have a 145 gallon tank.  Since my ear was still in the infected stage, I ended up going ashore for a swim and to pump up the dinghy since the noise of the generator and the high pressure pump was getting to me.

Ok since I wrote this draft two weeks ago, I'm trying to remember everything else that happened after this.

I learned how to bake bread (and pizza dough).  Steve sewed the headsail. We went to the beach almost every day.  We snorkeled.  We hiked.  We went into George Town for errands.  We went to Chat N' Chill's Pig roast (which was just ok).  We attended beach church.  We had people over for drinks, appetizers and guitar playing.  Other than that, not much else to report.  We are planning to leave here on Thursday for a trip to Long Island and the Ragged Islands.  After that, we will probably head back here for the Regatta or continue south to the Aukland Islands and then Turks and Caicos.  We are just not sure what we feel like doing yet. We are getting quite comfortable here!!