Still Down and out in George Town

The crazed, blistering pace of the Cruising Regatta has completely disappeared, along with most of the boats. Warm, indolent breezes have replaced the unusually brisk and cold winds that plagued this year’s “season”. Even so, boats are streaming out of the harbor each morning, announcing their farewells on VHF for the remaining pilgrims to mourn over. The few that are left behind mostly cherish this quiet time, and the opportunity to practice listlessly relaxing activities such as hanging out and walking on the beach.

With the change in weather, the oceanside beach has become calm, allowing the seashells to repopulate strategic coves and crannies. I say strategic, as Wayne and I are working every morning now at collecting a maximum amount of shells before any other lame-o cruisers get to it. Perhaps you think that shell gathering is easy work? Although rewarding to be sure, it is back-breaking, sweat-producing and damp. Today we brought two large bottles of water along, and drained them easily before half time. Sometimes, if suddenly changing from stooped and squinting to erect and squinting, your head spins and you feel like you may pass out. Some people call this positional low blood pressure or a vasovagal response. I call it dehydration, mixed with late-night bonfires and hot, hot sun. Wayne did remark we are getting pretty brown. Occupational hazard.

These last couple of weeks, we’ve been hanging out with a bunch of musician types. We first saw Chad and LeAnne from Cambration in Black Point. At that time I noticed that they were painfully young and thin. My maternal instincts reared up, and I insisted to Wayne that we would have to have them to the boat for dinner sometime to fatten them up. In the meantime, they managed to get married – first the “religious” ceremony in Staniel and then the “official” ceremony here in George Town. We had dinner with them and our new friend Lee from Krasna the other night aboard Lee’s boat. It was charming getting to know them, and hear their story of young romance. What was shocking, however was to learn that Chad had written a computer program which allows you to catalogue your boat lockers by content and location. He says he had to do this because they have $2500 worth of canned goods stored in various locations all around their boat. Sheesh, those kids have more food that we do!

So, Chad’s a great guitar player and singer, and Lee is also very fun. Lee has a more off-beat guitar playing style and a great baritone voice for which he stands out at sing-alongs. Lee is also remarkable for his great, piercing blue eyes, thick tangle of grey ponytail stuffed under a do-rag, and colorful past. The guy has been in jail any number of times, escaped three times under his own power and was unleashed by the US Embassy on various other occasions. Lee is a photo journalist who specializes in covering war zones. He can’t really recall all the countries (and jails) he’s been in but they include places like Colombia, Venezuela, Bosnia, Croatia, Afghanistan, etc. He spent the last 15 years living in the Czech Republic with his wife (a professional musician) and child but is now single-handing his 42-foot ketch as his wife decided their gig was up. He is a wonderful guy who has forgotten more great stories about his life than he can remember. We can only hope he’ll write a book someday.

The other musicians we’ve been hanging out with are Chris and Sarah from Moonraker and Gary and Celeste from Sol Surfin’. Chris and Sarah are small, dark, and delicately-boned. They live in the Chesapeake, not far from our intended new home of Chestertown, Maryland. Gary and Celeste are from California. To those of us from the UP, that’s about as exotic as being from the Bahamas so I’m tempted to leave it at that; but I really can’t. Gary looks too young to have such a fab boat – a large and gorgeous catamaran – and plays a mean guitar with a penchant for acoustic Led Zep. Celeste has long brown hair, lovely soulful brown eyes, and looks like a fertility goddess. She is totally adorable and a wild-ass party girl. Oh, to be young again. Last night the aforementioned usual suspects assembled at Sand Dollar Beach – about a 2-mile dinghy ride for us – for a bonfire and musical jam session. We were joined by a smattering of others and had a rip-roaring good time. Wayne and I were lucky to be back aboard Cassiopeia by midnight: last time we spent a musical evening aboard Sol Surfin’ we didn’t get back till two in the morning. We’re just too old for that anymore. (Sad but true.)

Now as to the engine; we have good news and bad. Wayne managed to hook up a 12-volt freshwater pump which bypasses the usual system and therefore we can run the motor with a careful eye on the temperature gauge and the RPMs. We hope to only have to run it for entering and exiting harbors and going back through the cut at Cave or Galliot Cay. Bottom line is that it works. We managed to obtain a spare pump as well from another friend. We are pretty sure we can make it back to the states with not too much problem. The other good news is that Universal/Westerbeke is willing to send the parts needed to repair the cam shaft to a marina in Lake Worth (Palm Beach area). The bad news is that we’ll have to buy a new water pump and pay for all the labor to effectuate this repair. The guy helping Wayne here in George Town is another cruiser named Roger Wrona aboard a big trawler named Rollsdoc. Roger is a Yooper! So’s his wife! His family comes from Bruce Crossing and she comes from Watersmeet. Small world. Roger already gave us a lot of help, and is willing and able to do the job for us if and when we get to Stuart, Florida. He’ll be on a mooring ball there and in fact it could all work out OK. At any rate, it has to work out OK one way or another, but it’s just funny how Yoopers pop up at the strangest and best time some times.

So that’s it for now. We expect to be leaving George Town in a week or two and hop slowly up the Exumas. Since we intend to sail primarily, these will be short hops. But that should offer us the opportunity to do some fine snorkeling and watching for the green flash. Hey, life could be worse. We could be in Fargo with imminent flooding at the same time as looming blizzards. Damn, now that’s some bad weather.