Royal Island, Eleuthera, Bahamas

 Time to get in the water!  The hulls have a coating of slime and it was time to scrape it off.  (The bottom paint is over a year old now and we haven't touched it since the last haulout).

 The slime was not very bad - I scraped on it for about an hour just using a soft plastic trowel.  Only the first 2' or so below the waterline had any slime at all.  The keels are pretty much clean. 

After lunch we went for our first snorkel.  Near the boat there are some shallow heads.

The usual pretty coral and small fish.

 

I saw this rather large remora swim by - at first glance I thought it was a small shark.  But it's clear that it's a remora as you can see the weird "suction cup" on it's head where it attaches to it's "host" (usually a shark).  Weird creature!

 

And then I spotted this turtle just resting on the bottom.

 

I was hoping he might swim away and I could film his graceful exit, but he was happy just to sit and let me photograph him!

 

As we got a late start, the sun was getting low and the light was not enough for a prolonged snorkel.  Back to the boat.

 

 And we were treated once again to a pretty sunset.

 

And pretty sunrise this morning!

Royal Island, Eleuthera, Bahamas

 Nothing new to post - but I ran across this photo that I forgot to upload from our trip down the intercoastal the other day.  This monohull on our AIS was in front of us for a little while the day we were doing the "bridge dance".  Thought it was neat that someone else liked the name "Sojourn".  (I guess that makes us "First Sojourn").

Royal Island, Eleuthera, Bahamas

 The repaired muffler installed and good to go.

 

Leaving Bimini.

 

And the view for hours and hours in the afternoon.

 

Occasionally we saw a go-fast boat.

 

And before long a lovely sunset.  Jib still up lending maybe a knot of speed to the one motor running.  We were only going about 5 knots most of the night.

 

And treated to another lovely sunrise!

Fished during daylight hours with no luck. 

We anchored at the northern end of Eleuthera along the shoreline of Royal Island.  We'll rest and regroup for activities tomorrow.

Bimini, Bahamas

 Here's a photo of the muffler getting close to installation.  (The JB Weld areas are hidden by the huge exhaust hose).  This will all be clamped together.

Bimini, Bahamas

 Still not sure where we'll head next...

But I thought I'd show you the rusty muffler.  This part is sortof hidden against the hull so it's not like we could inspect it see the rust. I know, it looks horrible!

And here's Duane's handiwork with JB Weld.  He'll reinstall it this morning and see if it holds.  If not....we'll have to regroup and figure something else out!

Bimini, Bahamas!!

We pulled anchor fairly early.  We weren't in a particular hurry, but we knew we had a rather tedious day in front of us - many, many bridges needed to be opened for us. 

You know the drill - call the bridge tender and let him know you need the bridge opened.  

Some of the bridges open on request as you approach.  But several on this particular stretch only open on the hour and half hour.   This makes it tedious to figure out how fast to move the  boat to make the next scheduled opening.   Two bridges in particular are timed such that you must maintain 6.5 knots to make both of the bridge openings in sequence.  Since we had a current against us, we would have had to run both engines at full power to make that speed.  So we decided to spend an hour slowly going between those two bridges instead of 1/2 hour.  Good choice, was quite relaxing to putz along at about 3 knots.  

Coming up behind us (faster bigger boat) was the Lagoon Purrfect that we had met in Green Turtle Cay last year.  Nice folks.  Chatted with them a few minutes as they whizzed by.  Will likely run into them along the way in the Bahamas.

 By the time we got down to Palm Beach Duane had researched the offshore weather a bit more - and the decision was made - there was a nice weather window that we could go south during the night Thursday to Miami and then head over to Bimini at about 2AM.  (We need to be farther south to counter-act the gulf stream effect).  

We circled Peanut Island a couple of times - peeking out the inlet to see if the waves looked tolerable.  I was inside doing all our customs paperwork since this was sortof a last minute decision.  We had our Covid tests and the clock was ticking on our 5 day window - so we just decided to go for it.  Busy area.

 

The inlet was not too bad.  Just a good up & down roll.

 

Near West Palm Beach -  I won't whine any more about the wave action....but photos are notorious for "flattening out" waves.  There were large rolling waves - that lifted the boat up from behind, then the boat just sortof sogs down into the vacant space.  Not pleasant.  But the boat handles it well and no harm done.

 Pretty sunset.

This was midnight between Ft. Lauderdale and Miami.  Pretty skyline, the photo certainly doesn't do it justice.

 

 We were treated to the most spectacular sunrise about mid-way to Bimini!

 And there was a good bit of shower activity.  Glad we have good radar - this cargo ship appeared out of the cloud bank exactly where the AIS and radar said it was!

 

Arrival at the Bimini channel was a welcome thing! I was so tired of all the movement.  Ahhh, back to that pretty water!

 

At the dock for fuel - we raised our "Q" quarantine flag since we haven't cleared customs.  We made fairly quick work of that since the Bahamas has a new online system.  It's a little cumbersome, but after only 3 phone calls, we got it all worked out and paid our $600 for our cruising permit for the year.  

 

Off to immigration first - at "the pink building".

 

Then to the Big Game Marina for customs.  Nice setting...

 

After visits to both the customs and immigration offices, we're all set.  Time to raise a new Bahamas courtesy flag on the halyard!

 

All legal now!

I forgot to mention earlier.....we kept having a bilge pump alarm go off.  Duane had just recently installed the alarm buzzers and one of the bilge pumps is a little finickier than the other.  The starboard pump turns on momentarily for apparently no reason.  So we weren't concerned.  But when we got in the rough seas, the alarm was coming on frequently.  Nothing to do, we peeked in the bilge and nothing unusual was there, just a little bit of water like normal.  So we endured the alarm for the next 12 hours.  Not pleasant.  (We could have turned the pump off, but didn't really want to do that since it is a very important safety feature!)  Eventually Duane braved some investigation - remember, it's hard to stand up in the boat without holding on to something.  And it's dark.  

Anyway, after all that lead-in, he eventually found that the wet exhaust muffler had rusted thru and was leaking sea water into the bilge.  Slowly, hence the infrequent alarms.   So, now we have a repair we need to do before we move on.   (Remember - cruising is really just fixing your boat in exotic places!!)

So after clearing customs we set out on the bikes to the hardware store.  JB Weld may be the solution for a temporary fix.  This hardware store is old-fashioned and is packed with all sorts of supplies.  

 By this time, we were parched.  Up the hill to a shack that sells beer and food.   I wanted conch fritters but they were out.  We settled for some yummy fresh french fries (Kris, you would have liked them!)

 

And of course the obligatory first cold Kalik's of the season. 

And I couldn't resist stopping at Charlie's Bakery to see what goodies they have.

I chose a few sweet tooth items - yum for breakfast tomorrow!

Back to Sojourn -happy at the dock.

Now we'll try to get that muffler repaired and on our way to Andros or somewhere else!

Near St. Lucie, FL

 As helped Kris & Dean shove off our shared mooring, Jeff & Jeana waved on Meriwether passed by on their way south.  We'll probably see them again later in the season in the Bahamas.

 

And it's time to part ways with Charm.  Disconnecting the lines holding us together.  Note the long sleeves and jackets.  Hopefully our last chilly morning.  (It was about 60 degrees.  BRRR).

 

And just like that, they were away!  They are going to meet up with their son in Nassau for a Christmas visit.  We will probably see them again later in the season as well.  (Notice a theme here - cruisers are happy to wave fare-well because we know there's always the (likely) chance we'll meet again!)

We then hopped in our dinghy to go ashore - caught the city bus over to an urgent care office to get our Covid test.

Pretty but blustery sunrise over the ocean view from the city bus.

 

Strange process - we sat on the sidewalk outside until they called us to come inside for the test.  (Others were waiting in their cars....)

 

We were expecting someone to come out, swab our noses and we'd be on our way. No, apparently not.  They called us on our phones to tell us to come inside (masked, of course).  Then they took our blood pressure, asked a million questions just like a regular doctor's appointment.   Entire medical history.  Then we got taken to an exam room where the nurse swabbed our noses.  We were told to stay put for the 15 minutes while the test results were gathered.  A physician's assistant came in with our results about a half hour later (negative).  He listened to our chests and sent us on our way.  I'm telling you all this because I'm pretty sure our insurance will be billed for the $225 office visit (each) we saw posted on the wall.    We only scheduled at this office because there were no appointments available for the "free" tests at CVS/Walgreens in the next week.  Oh well, despite taking about 2 hours, we now have our required negative Covid tests in hand that are good for departure to the Bahamas in the next 5 days.  Now we've just got to get positioned to cross the gulf stream and get there!

Back to the boat and we let go of the mooring much later than we'd hoped.  

Near Ft. Pierce, we did find this really strange water-phenomenon.  I could see a vivid difference in water color ahead.  But sometimes this is just a dark cloud shadowing.  As we got closer it was clear that it was not a cloud - it was actually the junction of two bodies of water - one dark/tannic and the other much clearer.  Kinda weird!

We only made it about 30 miles south before the sun was setting.  Anchored along the intercoastal, whipped up a quick dinner and watched an episode of The Crown. 

 

And we want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!!  We will likely be traveling all day and won't have a chance to join anyone for a meal.  But we've got all the fixin's on board and may cook a belated meal to celebrate when we get settled.