Shopping, Shopping, Shopping

Shopping, Shopping, Shopping   …   Friday - Saturday 28-29 December 2012

The weather forecast is suggesting that there will be a good weather window to cross to the Bahamas in the middle of the week so we are busy making preparations. Tasha flies out of Orlando on Monday morning (New Year's Eve - 6am) heading for South Africa and her semester abroad. If all goes as planned we will leave Vero Beach later that morning and spend two days heading south to West Palm beach and the Lake Worth Inlet ready to leave early Wednesday morning for West End on Grand Bahama. Our friend Bob was planning to come with us but sadly he won't be able to make it because his mother in law passed away on Christmas. We hope that he will be able to join us at some later date. Gloria's brother Paul has decided that he will come along so we are very pleased about that. We think we have completed most of our jobs on the boat, we just need to top up with diesel, gasoline (for the outboard) and fresh water, and also stow the dinghy. Apparently supplies in the Bahamas can be quite limited and also expensive, so we have been shopping madly to provision for the months ahead and we have pretty much filled all our storage space. There is a stack of meat freezing down in Paul and Fran's freezer and we will transfer that to our freezer on the boat tomorrow. We have washed our fruit and veg in vinegar / water in an attempt to get it to last longer, but realistically we only expect it to stay fresh for a few weeks - after that we may be on the Atkins diet! Yesterday Gloria and Tasha went clothes shopping with Fran and her sister - thankfully I managed to cry off that one. Today we just bought what I think will be our most important purchase - a lure that is supposed to be great for Dorado (aka Dolphin Fish or Mahi-Mahi) so if we get reasonable conditions on the crossing we will definitely have a shot at fishing the gulf stream! Tonight we are off to the Comedy Night at the local theatre.

Mike

27 41 28.6 N, 80 23 41.6 W