Thursday February 26th, 2015
Mango was talking about this years weather to another Island Packet boat that has been cruising these waters for over 15 years. They reported that this year is the worst year for weather they have seen. They have never been hunkered down waiting for big blows to calm down with the frequency they have this year. The old pattern was a cold front would go through and it would be followed by 5 or 6 days of weather you could move in. Now we are getting cold fronts that stall over the Northern Bahamas and that lets the trades set up and intensify. Might be able to cross the reef tomorrow and hunker down at anchorage in the Berries but leaving a dock to hunker down…
We are getting the lay of the land here and like the Caribbean grocery and material things are sparse and expensive. We did have a nice hour or so yesterday afternoon at the End of the World Saloon. The ladies there were friendly and served some great drinks. You are allowed to sign the walls/ceilings etc and we did so. I spent a while looking for DevOcean and Bliss but to no avail…
We packed up a basket and headed south to find a place to play some King’s Cribbage and have our snack. There is a resort that is for sale but closed. The gate was open and it looked like it was out-of-the-way so we went in and took over. It went well until the owner’s cousin came in…he was nice enough. “Not sure what my cousin would say”. We finished our game and moved on.
We explored options for phone communication. Both boats have issues at home that we need to be available for and a regular phone is required. We discovered that buying the chip for the phone for data and phone is much easier and friendly to do than to unlock your phone. I gave up trying to phone Rogers and used their online chat to get the unlock accomplished. It went very well and only took about twenty minutes to complete. The service is BTC and so far seems good. Brown’s Marina has reasonable wifi.
While we were at the BTC compound we extended that walk and went to Charlie’s Bread, a home bakery with some amazing white and coconut bread. We put orders in for a pickup at noon. There is a peanut butter shortage on FRACAS…we may have to have a boat puke in order to find peanut stores. You will recall that a boat puke is when all the stuff gets removed from all the lockers, cupboards, drawers and hiding holes.
We had dinner at the restaurant next door (not the end of the world)
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