George Town

swimming pig at Big Majors Cay looking for a handout

2/15/12 Still at Staniel Cay

Did some boat chores today, finished the refurbishing of the icebox cover and insulated it.  Went into shore to get connected at the yacht club, met lots of cruisers and did some socializing. I went to the phone office and purchased a sim card and a phone card so we can make calls again and receive calls, still expensive per minute though so I won’t be little miss gabby when I do use it.  So I have come up with enough good recipies for stingray that I told Stan we can pursue them for food. The potato ray cakes are very good and I did a baked ray dish using chopped veggies, paprika, turmeric and red wine vinegar that came out delicious.

2/16/12

Had to clean bilge and bilge pump as pump got plugged with crap, messy job (Stan did the messy part), we have 3 bilge pumps, 1- manual ( as in hand not electric), 1 auto, and 1 that you turn on when needed.  Was able to get to the Thunderball cave(of 007 fame) before the current started ripping which was very cool, then over to the beach on Big Majors to be greeted by the swimming pigs, they did not care much for the carrots I brought them.  Sailed to Blackpoint Settlement in the afternoon, caught a barracuda en-route but let it go, too big to eat, my such big teeth they have, scary just handling them to get the hook out to release them.  If I get this reputation for letting them go maybe they will never bother me when swimming.  One thing I had to do was remove all my jewelry, only thing I can’t get off is my wedding band so I either tape it over of wear my diving gloves as a little flash in the water can cause an attack.

This is the first anchorage we have been to where we were not the only ones blowing our conch horn at sunset, at least 5 or 6 others joined in and a couple boats that did not have a conch to blow used their boat horns.

2/17/12

Checked out town in the morning, very nice community, very friendly people, read the rest of the day, 1^st time in a while we did absolutely nothing other than relax.  As I have mentioned the boat chores are endless but the difference between the need to accomplish maintenance on a boat vs on a house is your house won’t sink. Had grilled mahi mahi for dinner, we have 1 mahi mahi and enough ray for 1 more dinner left in our freezer so it is time to get serious about filling our food locker again.

2/18/12

Snorkeled in the AM in search of conch and lobster, I came up with 2 conch, pickings are very slim around here, although there were numerous conch they were all too immature for the taking.  They were in 25-30 ft of water and the bummer is when you seem them from that high above they look a lot bigger but once you get down there they just weren’t keepers. It is definitely a work out going that deep and to come up empty handed.  Stan tried his sling to spear fish but concluded he needs to hone his skill as the spear just bounces off the fish and they give him the look like” your kidding right”.  So our net result was barely enough conch for one meal but I will make it stretch into a meal of conch fritters.  In the afternoon we picked up anchor and headed to Big Farmers Cay the wind was on the nose and we motored the whole way it was a short hop though.  We got anchored and Stan had another upset stomach, Stan think it may have been that crystalline thing we eat from the conch so he was out of it for the night, I made myself tomato soup for dinner.  

2/19/12

Stan was feeling much better obviously because he was like a man possessed, up early, pull the anchor and head for George Town, captain wishy washy at it again as yesterday we were going to explore the cays in this neighborhood but because of the weather window to go outside was available he changed his mind.  So before coffee we were gone, excellent sailing weather though. Had a great sail on one tack all the way to George Town.  Stan trolled a bright red lure on our way and hooked into something really big but ended up losing it before he got it close to the boat, turns out when inspecting the lure he forgot to take the plastic protector off the hook :-) oh well, betcha that won't happen again.

Lots of boats anchored here, this evening with all the boat anchor lights it looked like Christmas.

2/20/12

Headed into George Town to scope out whats available and make a few purchases, water is free at the dinghy dock which is nice, we ended up topping off our water tanks.  Stan made his famous scalloped potatoes which we had with our last mahi mahi and corn sauteed with onions and peppers.  Stan also made a big batch of salsa, great to have him in the galley as he really is a good cook.

2/21/12

The wind is up today and I decided not a good day to make the trek to town to do laundry although Stan went in to make arrangements for the repaired datamarine depth gauge to be sent to us. It won't be delivered until next Tuesday so it appears we are here for awhile.  Stan came back from town with a big sirloin steak which we marinated 1/2 and froze the other half.  Stan jumped in the galley and made onion soup which will be for dinner tomorrow night.  I spent the day boat cleaning and inventory our stores to determine what we need to stock up on before we leave as there will not be much out there until we get to the Dominican Republic.  Food prices and variety of goods is excellent here. Sue and John from the catamaran "Smooch" came by and we gave them all of Whoopi's dog food and medicines we had for her. They have a 12 year old golden name Checkers, they were very grateful and invited us for coctails tomorrow afternoon at their boat.

Dinner was awesome,the marinated sirloin was grilled perfectly, leftover scalloped potatoes and fresh steamed broccoli.

2/22/12

Another beautiful morning in paradise, I am doing 3 loads of laundry and getting ready to upload the blog.

 Stan and I want to thank everyone for the kind thoughts about the loss of our loved Whoopi, we of course are trying to move on the best we can but we do think about her a lot and will continue to as she was such a large part of this adventure. Thanks again, Elizabeth and Stan