We made it! We entered the Beaufort, NC channel just after sunrise and are now anchored near the town docks. We have our yellow quarantine flag up, a traditional warning to other mariners that no one on board has showered in several days. No, kidding. The flag is hoisted to indicate that we haven’t yet cleared customs and officially entered the United States. We’re waiting for a call from the Customs and Border Patrol inspector, who will come out to EXIT to review our passports and paperwork. Only then can we step off the boat.
Author: Linda (page 1 of 7)
One day into our passage and all is well so far. Jordan’s flight from Miami to Marsh Harbour on Tuesday was cancelled due to thunderstorms, so he flew to Nassau instead and caught a 6:30 a.m. flight to Marsh Harbour yesterday morning. (All this after a red-eye from Boulder the night before. He’s hereby awarded a special medal for travel valor.) We shared lots of hugs, Elsa showed off the layer cake she’d baked in welcome, and then we headed out.
Hard to believe this is happening already, but we’re about to depart the Bahamas and head back to the US! Drew’s brother Jordan is flying in for the three-day-ish passage to North Carolina. We can’t wait to see him and are excited to head home, but feeling wistful too.
The only downside of our visit to Cat Island? Our refrigeration system failed the day we arrived. Oof.
Our fridge and freezer share a chill plate, which we cool down twice a day via a compressor that runs off the generator. (There’s also an engine-driven compressor but it stopped working several months ago.) The generator wouldn’t start after we anchored, and Drew quickly discovered that its raw-water impeller had disintegrated. (Impellers are like propellers, except they suck in water rather than push it out.) Not to worry: He’d ordered spare impellers in Seattle and brought them on board for just such an emergency. Only, oops, it seemed that pumpvendor.com had shipped the wrong parts. They were too small. No fix was at hand.
Well, we escaped the Land of the Lotus-Eaters.
After returning from Seattle we sailed south to George Town, Great Exuma, the southern terminus for most visitors to these islands and a place where people stay for weeks on end. (One of its nicknames is “Chicken Harbor” because few boats have the courage to go further south — there are almost no people, water or provisions until you get to the Dominican Republic.) We saw over a hundred boats spread across the bay when we arrived. This was actually fewer than usual; in normal years there can be three or four hundred.
© 2024 SV EXIT
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Recent Comments