Hog Cay, Ragged Islands, Bahamas

 Time to get the cruiser hut ready for the Valentines party....lots of cruisers came ashore to join in.  

Starting out, we pulled out one of the attached shades. 

 

 And got busy supporting it with poles and lines.  Anchors for the lines buried in the sand.

 

 

 One shade in place....

 

Moving on to the next one -the large shade fabric roll had to be taken down from the rafters where it is stored every year.

 

 The interior of the hut was cleaned out and the food-serving table moved into place for tomorrow's feast.

 

 

Then it's just a matter of attaching the shade to the hut on one end and supporting it mid-air!

 

 

 

 

A few tree limbs needed to be trimmed. 

 

 Lots more support lines installed.

 

Moving the tables under the shade.

 

Mostly done....

 

Relaxing after the chores are finished.

Looking nice.

Back to the boat for lunch and some relaxing....later in the evening we went back ashore.  Lots of folks, new and old.
 

 

 

 

 

 The teens put up the volleyball net and had a good time.

 

Back to the boat for sunset - a small green flash.  Party tomorrow!

Hog Cay, Ragged Islands, Bahamas

 We started the day over at the hut, just getting things a little more situated for the party....

John and Sandy volunteered to bring over some long bamboo poles to replace the ones that got washed away in the hurricane.  These will be used to support the huge black net sunshade.

Otherwise, just a bunch of various chores - cruisers came over to the hut all morning to chip in.  Ron and Dee from Ursa Minor.

Bob from Two of a Kind cleaning up some trash with Duane.

Jerry spent a long time out in the sun cutting up all the driftwood we'd pulled over and piled up.  This will be used to keep the cook fire hot!

 

Diane from Two of a Kind and Rick from C Language moving some more sand.

 

After lunch, we took advantage of the calmer weather to go snorkeling.

 

On the way back to the boat over the sandbar we could see a shark - Duane took the dinghy near it for a quick photo.

 

The sunset was lovely with a small green flash at the end.

 

I still haven't figured out my camera settings for night photography....Ron made a UHF announcement that we could go out an see the SpaceX rocket launch...it was fun to watch, crystal clear to my eyes but the photo is worthless!

Hog Cay, Ragged Islands, Bahamas

 Another busy day!

In the morning, we went over to the southern little beach to retrieve the piece of plywood/tabletop that had gotten washed ashore there during Hurricane Michelle.  It's in rough shape but beggars can't be choosers out here!  We removed all the nails and carefully got it on our dinghy. 

Slowly took it over to the cruiser hut.  Maxine had sent some 2x4's and nails/screws over yesterday for us to use to rebuild the table.

 

We put it all together - after lunch we came back with Jerry & Donna to get the table back usable.

 Jerry and Duane doing some measurements.

And then they just proceeded to build the support legs.

  

 

Chris from Solaris joined in to help.

 

And Bob from Two of a Kind joined as well!

 

Support legs complete, tabletop was attached.

Finished table....very sturdy but not very pretty.  It will be perfect for loading up with "auction" items for Saturday's Valentines party. 

 

 That all done, we were back to the boat for a rest....and later we heard a welcome shout from outside.  Lori from "42" was there for a visit.  We had given her our old jib to use to make bags and such.  As a thank you, she made me a custom bag out of our sail components!

 

 

It's absolutely lovely and creative!  She used the sail cloth itself, the rope was from the leech line imbeded in the sail (I think) and she polished one of the brass "hanks" that hold the sail to the forestay to use as a closure inside the bag.  She even included a piece of the sail where we had done the herringbone stitch to repair it as a memory of those hours of stitching before we decided to replace the sail!  So sweet of her! 

 

The tag says it all - "MADE BY LORI WITH LOVE & THE OCCASIONAL SWEAR WORD!"

 

 

 

Hog Cay, Ragged Island, Bahamas

 Busy day....the mailboat had arrived overnight so the plan was to go over to Duncan Town mid-morning.  First we dinghied over to Maranatha to do a bit of trading.  Their watermaker had failed so they were going to have to head to Georgetown.  Since they could get more gasoline there, we were going to trade a bottle of propane for  5 gallons of gasoline.  (We have extra propane on board but gasoline is hard to come by in the Ragged Islands!)  Duane offered to take a look at their watermaker - Marjane and I sat in the cockpit chatting.  Duane figured out that the culprit was a cooling fan failure causing the watermaker to overheat.  Fortunately, we have a spare similar (but not identical) fan that Duane thinks will work.  Repair on hold while we head over to Ducan Town.

 

 

 About halfway there, the dingy engine roars and the prop is wildly spinning....so we diagnose that we've "spun a prop".  Fortunately for us, there is enough friction on the shaft to turn the prop at idle.  So we putz back to the boat at idle.  It takes about 20 minutes at that speed.  

Fortunately, we have a spare prop also!

 

 It took Duane about 5 minutes to remove/replace the prop.   You can see the failed rubber inside the shaft.   Back to business heading towards Duncan Town. 

 

 The mailboat offload was still in progress....

 

 
 We visited a bit with Maxine and picked up a few groceries that I had not ordered. 

   

Were happy to meet up with Ralph and Leslie from Now & Zen for the first time this season!  Good catching up.  We'll see them again in the next few days leading up to the Valentine's party.

While waiting for our groceries from the mailboat, we visited with other cruisers at the Ponderosa....

Skye from Tangent joking with some local residents at the bar.... 

 

 Everyone hanging out waiting on their grocery boxes!

 

 After waiting some more, we determined that our wine order from Nassau had not made it to the mailboat.  We'll have to chase that down for next week.  Back to the boat with a speedy propeller!

 

 

Almost low tide!  Have to be careful with that pristine propeller, haha.

Back at the boat, Duane found a replacement fan and we headed back to Maranatha.

 

After about 15 minutes, Duane had things back running....fun day!