Seven hours, Three weeks, Six months … Wednesday 24th January 2018

Seven hours, Three weeks, Six months      …     Wednesday 24^th January 2018

As hard as it was to say goodbye to “mems and peps” it was lovely to see Gloria’s family, to reminisce and share feelings. For us it was particularly special to see Tasha again. It hasn’t been long since we said goodbye in St Thomas and it was great to spend time with her again, despite the sad occasion. Our trip to New England passed all too quickly and yesterday we flew back to the Caribbean. Our route took us from Boston to Miami (1500 miles) then on to St Lucia (another 1500 miles), with  a total flying time of about seven hours. We essentially flew the exact route that we intend to sail back home, with the exception that we will probably aim to make landfall in the USA further north in Florida. It’s fascinating that what can be done in seven hours in a plane would take about three weeks in our boat if we sailed non-stop by the most direct route, and will take us about six months according to our current plans!

The second leg of our flight was outstanding. We had incredible views of the Bahamas from 30,000 feet, and let me say, they are beyond beautiful. I was thrilled to be able to recognize many places, including Georgetown in the Exumas, where we had stayed in 2013 at the southern most point of our year afloat.  [Note to Rod and Sue: if you look at the second picture below you can see the anchorage on the west side of Stocking Island where we stayed and even the small lagoon where dinghies dock in town. Do you remember coming through a narrow channel and under a bridge to leave the lagoon shortly after we picked you up … just before it got really bouncy and wet!? You can’t make them out in the picture, but from the plane I could see boats anchored.]

Having studied Bruce van Saint’s book “The Thornless Path”, which outlines a method and route to Island hop against the trade winds all the way to the Caribbean, I felt like I could piece together a number of the key locations as we flew by. For example, I was also able to make out the Sandbore channel leading south to Providencales in the Turks and Caicos. We were very excited to recognize the Mona Passage between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, a challenging piece of water that we will be crossing on our way back, hopefully down wind!!

I do want to mention Eddie, our taxi driver. He drove us down from Rodney Bay to Vieux Fort last Thursday, a trip that took two hours. When he dropped us off we arranged for him to pick us up at the airport on our return, and true to his word, there he was waving a board with our names. We then had a spectacular ride on back roads (to avoid rush hour traffic) that gave us a wonderful view of the lush interior of the island and the villages.

Today we prepared the boat for departure from the marina, launching our dinghy, filling up diesel and water tanks, re-stocking our fridge – freezer and repairing the water-maker. The need to repair our water maker became evident when we tried to use it a couple of weeks ago and found that it firstly didn’t reach the level of dissolved salts required (we got 600 ppm rather than the target 200 ppm) and secondly, it leaked alarge amount of water into the bilge! Last week we had a really useful conversation with Jon, the owner of the local electronics / watermaker store and he said he believed our salt problem was low saline flow perhaps due to a dodgy pump, rather than a faulty “brine seal” as I suspected. On inspection we found a crack in the end cap of the membrane housing, which is almost certainly the source of the leak, but we also suspect results in low pressure through the unit and we hope this is the cause of the less than ideal performance. Jon did also mention that most membranes last about 5 years and ours was installed in 2007 so we’re on borrowed time at this point. Not only did Jon have good advice, but his store also had a replacement end cap in stock – awesome. This afternoon I was able to fit the new part and once we have left the marina we’ll be able to test it out.

The Bahamas from 30,000 feet - photos from my iPhone

The Exumas and Georgetown ... Georgetown is approximately in the middle, Stocking Island below it. Note the deep water (Exuma Sound >5000ft deep) to the east of the islands and the shallow water of the banks (<20 ft deep). To go from one to the other you need to pass "cuts" between the islands. All the water seen here to the west of Georgetown (top of the picture) is too shallow for us to sail.

The colors caused by the varying depth creates an abstract impression

Our watermaker - the membrane is housed in the black plastic tube. The end cap on the far right needed replacing. It looks like yet another jumble of wires and tubes that is the "city" underneath the floor of our boat.

Reflections of a powerboat