George Town, Saturday April 23

Today is St. George’s Day (he is the patron saint of England  - actually reputed to be a Roman born in Syria!!!), so in honor of his saintship we are today flying both the British red ensign and the closest we have to the English St. George flag – actually the number 8 pennant.  Also, because of St. George, Irina allowed me to write the blog today for the first time since we left the US!!

Nearly an English St. George's flag!! (Number 8)

Red Ensign - Go UK!!

Leftover (till tomorrow) X cross buns

It is also Easter weekend – a big holiday here in Bahamas. Most shops etc are closed Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Monday. We got local hot cross buns – very tasty, though the crosses need some work!!

Tuesday the regatta begins – there must be 30 local stalls erected in town – probably all selling beer, rum and conch and the Bahamian racing sailboats have started arriving in port. We’ll post photos of the boats and the races next week. Suffice it to say at this time that they are only small dinghy-type boats with large sails and crews of ten or more, mostly hanging out over the side on a large board to balance the boat underway- more to come on that.

The other reason I get to write this blog is to tell the story of the dinghy collection. We now have 2 dinghies and a kayak on Auriga (actually off Auriga at this time)..

3 for the price of 1????

This story began March 3^rd when were at Warderick Wells but to protect the innocent and avoid alarming Irina’s parents unduly we delayed writing about it until now!!!

So there we were just beginning to lower our 700lb dinghy on a bright sunny day at Warderick, when without warning it suddenly dropped 20 ft into the sea upside down!!!

Oh shit!!!

The immediate concern was how to right the dinghy and avoid an environmental catastrophe (not quite the Exxon Valdez but 10 gallons of gasoline and a few pints of engine oil do not exactly help the Exuma national sealife park maintain its beauty!!

Anyway, after several nearby boaters saw the situation, we were helped to tow the upside down boat ashore and eventually to turn it right way up – it is very heavy and took several people to turn it over. Fortunately, there was hardly any spillage of gas or oil in this process. We then towed the dinghy back to Auriga and began to think about what had happened and what to do next.

It turned out that a stainless steel shackle (probably made in China!!) had snapped completely - it had obviously been corroding through for some time but looked normal from the outside. When the shackle broke it put a shock strain on our stainless steel lifting cable that then also snapped, dumping our boat in the water upside down.

Needless to say, even though the dinghy motor was not running at the time of immersion, it did not like the experience and refused to start, so we began a long process of cleaning, drying and fiddling to sort out the problem(s).

Anyway, after a couple of days with no obvious progress and no way to get ashore from our anchored boat, we began to think seriously about what to do next. Fortunately, our friends, John and Travis were scheduled to fly in from Boston via Ft. Lauderdale the following weekend for the Selene Rendezvous week. John, with the help of another friend, Capt. Rolf Taunton Rigby, in Lauderdale, purchased a new dinghy for us at West Marine and brought it with him on the small passenger plane to Staniel Cay. And, because I am so smart (!!!!), I already had a small 5HP 2-stroke outboard on Auriga (much to Irina’s amazement) and voila, once again we were mobile and able to get ashore.    

So then we had 2 dinghies – one working and one dead!! Incidentally, John also brought new shackles and cable with him, so we were able to repair the boom lift and winch the dead dinghy back on board. Once on board we continued fiddling with the engine. We changed the engine oil several times, changed the spark plugs, and continued drying the engine with WD40 and sunlight. Finally, it coughed and spluttered a few times. By this time, our friend Dirk from Tybee Time was really committed to making this engine run again. We disassembled the 3 carburetors and over the course of several days and multiple goes finally got the engine firing, though it still ran very poorly, especially at lower speed. The final step was to remove the carburetor jets completely to clean them (probably grains of sand in the jets) but only one jet would come out. Despite our best efforts and lots of carb cleaner fluid, there was no way to remove the other 2 jets. So finally we arrived in George Town where we were advised to contact Mr. Perry Brown, the local engine guru. 3 Days later we got our carbs back with removable jets. And 2 days later with Dirk’s help, the engine is now running better than ever!!! So now after 6 weeks, we are up and running once again.

In the meantime, we have grown quite used to having 2 dinghies – a very fast relatively dry dinghy and a shallow draft slower boat that we get in closer to shore, though we shall probably sell the new dinghy after we get back to Fall River. Next step with the big dinghy is to see if we can get some help in Lauderdale on the return trip, to stop the slow seepage leaks that necessitate pumping it up a bit every few days. It is 10 years old and the inflatable tubes are getting a bit tired --- as I am sure you all are of this long drawn out story!!!

Enough said, Irina will be back as usual next time with her “girly” non technical accounts of life in the sunny Bahamas – by the way we just found out that we missed naked volleyball last week, damn!! In the meantime, here is a very rare Bahamian rainbow. It even rains here once in blue moon.

Where is that crock of (pirate) gold??