Transitions

We spent the day yesterday transitioning from winter mode to summer—aka winter in the Bahamas—mode. Since the laundry facilities at the marina are not in working order I washed most of our warmer clothes on the boat and hung them out to dry on the lifelines. We took the enclosure panels down and stowed them. We have been having intermittent trouble with the engine stalling and not wanting to start. We thought there might be air in the fuel system but couldn’t see where it was entering. On our trip from Brunswick to West End George discovered that a fuel filter he had replaced in Beaufort was not seated properly. He replaced it with another new filler and now the engine seems quite happy. 

We are now on our way from West End to Spanish Wells, Eleuthera, expecting it will take about 22 hours. A strong cold front is forecast to arrive tomorrow evening and we want to be settled somewhere we like before then. After that I will be happy not to have to do any overnight trips for a while. 

Clothes drying on the lifelines. I wrote about washing clothes on board and using a clothes spinner in a post last year here.

 Wool socks drying. We were very happy to have them over the past two weeks. I knit all but one pair (second from left) myself. 

                          We are hoping that squall on the horizon has moved out of our way by the time we get there. 




The islands of the Bahamas are surrounded by deep water. This photo shows the coast of Grand Bahama just a mile away. The chart says we are in water 900 feet deep—too deep for our depth sounder to take a reading. In contrast, we were in water 100’ deep when we were 44 miles off the coast of Jacksonville, FL.