George Town

Feb. 9, 2014

HAPPY ONE MONTH BIRTHDAY TO JOSHUA!  Our sweet grandson is one month old today.  Joshua will always be the wonderful “starting point” to our grand Bahama / Caribbean journey.  I’m looking forward to seeing him again really soon.

We spent the day in port yesterday in George Town.  We started the day listening to the “cruisers net” – it’s a VHF radio broadcast put on by the cruisers who are here for the “season”.  What we heard and read is that there is about 400 boats here – I believe it. 

We were low on diesel and fresh vegetables and fruit so we went ashore looking for them.  We found that the local grocery store was only open until 11 a.m. on Sunday and there was no diesel to be bought from marinas on the water – you have to bring in your diesel cans and get diesel from the local gas station.  I had some pictures I wanted to upload to the blog and needed good wifi to do it, so I found a local hotel that had wifi and I sat down with my cup of coffee and started downloading.  It was evident that it was going to take a while so Daniel took D-Time and went back to the boat to get our diesel cans.  Once back to the boat, he had to unload 5 full cans of diesel into the boat and then bring the empty cans back to town.  It was about a 1 ½ mile D-Time ride each way.  It took me an hour to download 13 pictures and then another 30 minutes to buy some groceries (milk, eggs, fruit and veggies).  Daniel pulled up to the dock, we unloaded the empty diesel cans and took them to the gas station.  Fortunately, the gas station had their own dock, so we didn’t have to haul them far.  We loaded up on $165 worth of diesel (in 5 diesel cans) and then headed back to C-Time. 

After lunch Daniel thought it would be a good idea to teach me how to drive D-Time.  So, hesitantly I climbed aboard.  Daniel stayed on C-Time.  Uh oh.  I was in D-Time all by myself.  He shouted instructions to me and I pulled the cord and cranked D-Time up.  Next thing you know I’m going all over the anchorage having a great time.  I even found a dolphin to chase.  It wasn’t so bad being the driver, after all.  With my new driving skill under my belt, it was time to really try it out.  Daniel sat up front and I drove us around to see George Town.  We landed (I’m not real good at this part yet) and walked across part of the island to see the Atlantic Ocean.  We walked the beach a while and then climbed to the top of Monument Hill.  Monument Hill, has a monument on top and a wonderful view of all of George Town and about 1,000 mosquitos.  We had left the bug spray on the boat – we had not run into any until now so saw no reason to carry it.  Lots of them!  We hurried up and noticed the view, and then ran down the hill and got in D-Time and headed back to C-Time. 

We saw some friends from Australia we had met in Little Farmers Cay and we ended up on their boat for late afternoon snacks and sharing of cruising stories.  Do you know, it’s really hard to find your own boat, after dark, from the water, if you didn’t leave any lights on except your mast light AND there a bunch of other boats around?  It didn’t take us long, but it was a bit of a sinking feeling that I would be spending the night on D-Time on the beach, with the mosquitos.