Jan 11 thru 15
I will lump our trip to New Orleans together into one log entry. Not that it was all one big blur - I actually behaved this year. The actual trip there went fine, although it was a long day. We were up at 05:00, taxied to the airport at 06:15, and caught a Bahamas Air commuter plane to Nassau. There we had to wait almost four hours for our two and a half hour Delta flight to Cincinnati on a regional jet. In Cincinnati, we waited about three hours for another Delta regional jet to take us two hours to New Orleans. The reason for the odd connections was that there still is not a full compliment of flights into New Orleans. Also, we were using Delta miles to make the trip, so we were restricted to them. One neat thing was that in Nassau, you actually clear US Customs and Immigration there. So, when you arrive in the US, you are already checked in. The majority of people going to the US from here are US citizens returning from a visit to Nassau that probably included a visit to Atlantis, the big casino. So, they routinely ask if you are carrying over $10,000 in cash. I laughed and said "I wish!" and explained that we had not been to the casino. She was very pleasant and enjoyed the banter.
In New Orleans, we were staying at the Hotel Monteleone which is a very nice hotel on Royal St. in the French Quarter. The group was originally booked into the Holiday Inn, a block away, but they had to move us since FEMA extended it's contract with them for housing FEMA workers or displaced people. The Monteleone is a nicer hotel, and they gave us a better deal, since we were staying two days more than the group was. Holiday Inn was going to charge us the regular rate for two days and the group rate for three. The Monteleone gave us the group rate for all five days.
As soon as we were checked in, we headed over to Original Tropical Isle at Bourbon and Toulouse. We hadn't been there more than a few minutes when Pam and Earl, the owners, came in. We started chatting with them and catching up on how they had fared in the storm. Overall, they made out quite well since their businesses, homes, and other properties are mostly located in the Quarter, which sustained minimal damage. The exception was a boat house Pam had at the Municipal Marina which was badly damaged although her boat was not. As the evening wore on, several other friends showed up. I had my required several Hand Grenades and we made it a fairly early night.
President Bush was in town Thursday morning, for another look at the progress. We were walking around in the morning and came across a protest at Jackson Square that was for his benefit, but he never came there of course. The protestors were mostly children and the signs they were carrying said "Category 5 levees now", or "Party Affiliation: Louisiana", or "Give us levees or life jackets".
As a service to other cruisers, anybody coming back to the States offers to bring mail so it can be actually mailed in the States. That saves a week or more on the delivery time. So, we had a bunch of mail to send. The simple stuff, we dropped in a box at the Cincinnati airport. We needed to buy some two-cent stamps because of the recent postage increase, and there was a stamp machine there by the box. Of course there were no one or two cent stamps, and the regular ones were thirty-sevens not thirty-nines. Ah the efficiency of the post office. Since we still needed two-cent stamps, and one of the items to mail was a heavy envelope to Canada, we needed a real post office anyway. We had asked Pam where one was and she directed us to one within walking distance. Fortunately, she also explained how to find it. It is on the second floor over a bank. There is a clear sing out front, but it was still odd. You walked in the bank, past the tellers to the back of the room, down a hall to an elevator and then upstairs to the small post office. This was not some kind of contract third-party deal. It was the real thing. We took care of the Canada mail and then asked for one hundred two-cent stamps, some for us and some to bring back to others who didn't plan on the increase. The clerk matter-of-factly said they didn't have any two-cent stamps. It took me a second, but I revised my request and asked for two hundred one-cent stamps. They had those, although two hundred was all they had, and she didn't want to sell them all to one person. I'm not sure I understand the logic in that, but rather than argue, I took one hundred.
We also walked by Touchdown Jesus, which is a statue behind the St. Louis Cathedral. If you are not familiar with Touchdown Jesus, the name comes from the fact that at night the floodlights that illuminate the statue cause the shadow to look like a football referee signaling a touchdown. The area surrounding the statue use to have many very large trees around the perimeter, but most of them fell in the storm. Remarkably they fell all around the statue but did not damage it.
When we were talking to Pam about the city, she offered to take us for a ride around to see the results of the storm. Thursday about noon, she took us out for an hour and a half ride. In a nutshell, to see the city today is heartbreaking. The pictures on the news just don't convey the same emotions as seeing it in person. In the French Quarter itself, there was minimal damage, and probably 75% of the businesses are open, although many are operating on limited schedules. I think that is due to lack of staff and lack of business. Quite a few landmark places, such as Brennan's, and Acme Oyster House, were not damaged but are closed and seem to be taking advantage of this time of no business to do major renovations. The Cafe Du Monde is open, but not 24x7 like it use to be. The Jax Brewery, which was long ago turned into a mall is closed since there was a fire in there. It was not destroyed but I'm sure it was smoked badly.
Once outside the Quarter the picture is significantly different. On Canal St., where many stores were, the majority are closed. Many were burned by the looters, including Saks Fifth Avenue, and most of the rest are still boarded up. Only a few were open. The Harrah's casino has not reopened, although it was not damaged. I suspect they just don't have the workers or the customers yet to open. The aquarium is still closed, although I saw a news story recently that they were starting to repopulate their tanks.
We drove out to the ninth ward first. The ninth ward is the neighborhood that had gotten all the news coverage, but it is far from the only neighborhood damaged. The ninth ward was probably the poorest part of the city. The homes were old and small and the folks who lived here were at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder. We were somewhat familiar with this area though, because it was right by where we spent a week on the boat last June. The Industrial Canal, which we transited last year between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River, is one of the canals that breached and caused the flooding in this area. Most of the houses in this area are just gone. Most were wood frame and just crumbled under the pressures of the flood waters. They are pier-and-beam construction, which means the house simply sits on stone or cement piers in the ground and are not attached to a slab or a real foundation. Because of this, many just floated of their piers and mashed into the one next door, or floated in the street. Most of those that are still more or less intact are not sitting where they belong now. On the white or lighter colored houses you can clearly see the waterline from the flood waters. In this area it looked to be about six feet to eight feet deep. Hundreds of cars are still in the neighborhood. Some parked on the side of the road liked they should be, some upside down in yards, some hanging on fences or trees in odd positions. What they all had in common was that they were covered with a white film from the dried slime of the flood waters. It was incredible to see this 100% devastation, and hard to imagine what it looked like before what cleanup has already happened. There obviously has been some cleanup because the streets are mostly passable, and we saw a few eighteen wheelers being loaded with debris. But, for the most part, stuff is just piled up awaiting a decision of how and if the area will be rebuilt.
From the ninth ward, we went east through the Gentilly and Lakeshore neighborhoods. Here the homes range from middle class to multi-million dollar. The flood waters didn't discriminate as to who got flooded. Many of the houses in this area are probably salvageable, but by salvageable I mean gutted to the bare frame inside and bricks outside. They will then need to be treated to prevent mold and whatever else might have been floating in the water, and then completely redone. Some of these houses looked like nobody had been there since the flood, some had been gutted and the debris hauled away already, and some appeared to be working on repairs. Some had FEMA trailers in the yards or driveways to live in while the work was done. Again, there were flooded cars all over the place. On every street there were numerous signs, as if a political campaign were underway, except these signs were advertising demolition companies, sheetrock hangers, crane services, etc. Driving was a challenge, even for a local person like Pam, because all the signal lights are out and may or may not have been replaced with temporary four-way stop signs.
We went by the West Marine store which had been so helpful to us back in June. They had special ordered a couple of parts for us, and then one of the employees delivered them to the boat yard free of charge. The store shared a strip center with a grocery and a couple other small businesses. The whole building is now vacant. I don't know if it was looted or has just been cleaned out by the company, but for now it is gone. The bank we had gone to next door to West Marine is closed too.
Pam owns a boat house in the Municipal Marina with a party barge pontoon boat. These boat houses are built along two sides of the marina. They have the ground floor which extends inland from the slip, then they have a second floor which is that far inland as well as out over the slip. Some are fully finished and lived in, some are just a place to keep the beer cold when you go to your boat. Pam's was nicely furnished and is theoretically repairable, but there is a question if they will tear down the whole row of them or not. The rest of the marina still has numerous boats sunk or damaged. The vast majority of the boats there have significant damage.
We did not get over to the Garden District, or Carrollton, nor did we go down to the boatyard or by the marina we had stayed in while there. We know that all the boats in the marina were swept up into the parking lot, and all the boats in the boatyard floated away, but I don't know if they have recovered at all. The Superdome roof has been repaired, and while we were there the Saints owner announced his intent to return the team to the city.
A very haunting thing as we drove through the destroyed neighborhoods was that we figured out the code of the spray panted markings on the front of every house and many vehicles. There would be a large X on the wall. The left triangle represented the agency that searched the premises. The top triangle was the date of the search. The right and lower triangles represented people found or bodies found. There were also markings describing pets found dead or alive. It was a very real reminder of what happened here.
We witnessed an interesting thing as we boarded our flight in Cincinnati. A mother and father we saying goodbye to their teenage daughter as she was heading off to start college - for the second time. She was a freshman at Tulane, and had been sent back home after the storm. Tulane and several other universities are resuming operation this month. We learned on the news that Dillard University is reopening, but their dorms are mostly uninhabitable, and much classroom space is still not usable, so they have leased half of the huge Hilton Hotel downtown for dorm rooms, and are using conference room space at the hotel for classrooms.
One morning we had breakfast in the Royal Sonesta Hotel. We were served by a wonderful woman named Ruthie. We learned from her that she had lost her home and had been living in a shelter in Birmingham, AL until a week ago when she returned to New Orleans and moved in with her sister. Ruthie said she considered her options regarding returning, but realized that New Orleans was her life and she had to come back. She had worked at the Royal Sonesta for twenty six years and wanted to return. Strange as it seems to many people, this seems to be the prevailing sentiment. Of course, we were only encountering people who were back. There are obviously many who will never return.
Another subtle difference we noted in the French Quarter was the lack of any Lucky Dog vendors. Lucky Dogs are hot dogs that are sold from street carts that look like big hot dogs on wheels. The dogs are pretty good, especially after a few adult beverages, and I always have at least one.
On to the better part of the weekend. The event we are attending, Pardi Gras, is put on annually by our good friends Jerry & Mary Diaz. The point of the event is to party and enjoy a lot of music from tropical style musicians. Over three hundred people were pre-registered for the event and another twenty or so signed up at the door. This was about the same as last year's numbers, so the hurricane didn't dampen the spirits of those who wanted to support the city and the event. While this is not an official Parrothead event, most of the attendees are Parrotheads, and several clubs help with the event. There were a dozen or so musical acts, at three different locations including the Tropical Isles and the Margaritaville Cafe. Friday night evening our friends Fred & Sara Guerrero were crowned King and Queen of Pardi Gras at Tropical Isle and then a parade followed from Tropical Isle, to the Margaritaville Cafe. At Margaritaville, we were treated to a couple hours of music by our friend Kelly McGuire. Kelly again sang the as yet unpublished song that he debuted for us in Key West last November that he was inspired to write when we left to pursue our dream.
Saturday afternoon was a block party on Bourbon St. by Tropical Isle. Bourbon St. gets turned into a pedestrian mall every evening after 19:00, but it is very unusual to get the city to block it off during the day, with the exception being Mardi Gras. The city was very accommodating to us since we were the first organized group to return to the city since the storm. At the block party, we were entertained by the Sunny Jim Band and Jerry's band, Hanna's Reef.
One of the big events of the weekend was the replacing of the street signs along Bourbon St. Most of the street signs disappeared in the weeks immediately following the storm, perhaps taken as souvenirs by some of those from out of town. Ten Parrothead clubs contributed $250 each to replace the signs along twelve blocks of Bourbon St. That's four signs per intersection and the brackets to mount them. The signs were made by a local sign company who has made every sign Tropical Isle has ever bought, and they are heavier than the original ones. The city could not get a crew to install them, so several volunteers spent several hours Saturday morning mounting all the signs. They saved the one at the corner of Bourbon and Orleans, right in front of Tropical Isle for last. At 15:00 during the block party, Pam & Earl from Tropical Isle, a representative of the mayor's office, the local city council woman, and the owner of the sign company all participated in a ceremony to mount that last sign, and proclaim the day a special one in the rebuilding of the city. As Pam pointed out during her speech, for every $7.00 Hand Grenade they sell, $.60 goes to the city in sales tax. So our motto of "Rebuilding New Orleans One Drink At A Time" was appropriate.
I got quite the surprise at the block party when my old friends Donna & Todd showed up by surprise. They drove over from Tallahassee to say hello since we were so close. Todd's step-father and his brother are working in New Orleans doing commercial wallpapering, so Todd got to see them too. They all joined us Saturday afternoon and evening, and then we got together again for coffee and beignets at Cafe Du Monde Sunday morning before they left to drive back to FL.
Sunday late morning and early afternoon were spent at the Margaritaville Cafe. We were entertained by many of the songwriters who had been there over the weekend. This was a chance to hear the songwriters without their whole bands do a few original songs each, and hear the stories behind the songs. It's always my favorite part of the weekend. There was a buffet set up which was breakfast foods in the morning and lunch stuff including cheeseburgers after noon. We got to bid farewell to many of our friends as they had to take off for home.
Most of the gang left Sunday, but a few, including us, were staying until Monday. We were invited to join several friends who were going to Galatoire's for dinner. Galatoire's is an old New Orleans tradition. One of our friends has a brother who lives in New Orleans and he explained to us how this place has worked for years. They do not take reservations, so on the big nights of the week, like a Friday night, a member of the family would go stand in line several hours before dinner time. When they opened, the whole family would be there, and you got seated. Each family would have their favorite waiter, and would request him every visit. Because you were a regular, you didn't need menus, because either you knew what was on it, or you trusted the chef to make you something you would like. You didn't pay a bill at the end of the meal, because they just put it on your tab and sent you a bill at the end of the month. Of course everybody dressed up for dinner back then, and many who come here still do. They do require sport coats still, and they will provide one if you don't have one. So, I had an old, ill fitting sport jacket over my t-shirt. I had only been to one other restaurant that did the sport coat thing about twenty-five years ago, and I swore I would never do it again, but I'm glad I did, because it was interesting to hear the history of how places like this use to work. The food was very good too. You told them what entree you wanted, and then the veggies and potatoes were served family style. After dinner we had a special coffee. They bring out a large silver bowl that has some type of liquor and pieces of fruit in it, then set it on fire making a big show of splashing it around with a ladle. After it warms up a bit from the fire, they pour coffee in the bowl. Then they ladle out small cups to each person. It tasted very similar to spiced wine. It was very tasty.
GPS N 26-32.806 W 77-03.207 Miles made good this leg 0. Total miles covered 3693.
Jan 16
We leave New Orleans this morning. Our friends Stale and Anna Mae, who live in Kemah now, but are moving to New Orleans, are picking us up and taking us to the airport since they have their car here. Stale works for Stolt Tankers, a large tanker company from Norway. With this promotion he will be in charge of their New Orleans operations. While they liked living on the island of Clear Lake Shores in TX, this is apparently an offer he shouldn't refuse, even though moving to New Orleans right now is a challenge.
Our flight is at 10:00 to Atlanta, and we arrive at the airport about 08:15. Since we have an international itinerary, we have to check in at the real desk, not one of the do-it-yourself kiosks. The line is not long, but it takes almost half an hour to get checked in. Our flight plan today is much more efficient than on the way in. We go from New Orleans to Atlanta, have about fifty minutes there and on to Nassau. We got through security and were just moseying towards our gate, which was the last in the terminal of course, since we had over an hour until flight time. As we passed the bank of TV's displaying the flights I noticed that our flight was showing an hour delay. This would mean missing our Nassau connection, which I thought was the only one available. There was another light to Atlanta at the gate next to ours which was just finishing boarding. I quickly explained the situation to the gate agent, and she was able to put us on that flight although we couldn't sit together. A close call. If I hadn't happened to look at that TV, we would have probably been stuck in Atlanta overnight, as well as screwing up our plans from there. As it was we got to Atlanta with enough time to grab a slice of pizza and get to our next flight. The flight to Nassau from Atlanta was the first full-sized jet we had gotten on this journey, and we had exit row seats. It was like being in first class after four little planes.
In Nassau, we knew we were back in the islands because as we walked towards the immigration hall, we could hear island music playing. Sure enough, there in the immigration area was a three piece band. Welcome back! There were about ten or twelve lanes open for immigration, and as luck would have it the guy in front of us had a problem. So we stood and waited while he got resolved. It appeared he did not have a return ticket which is a requirement for entry. We have heard many people say they were never asked about that, but it is why we have a copy of our cruising permit with us since we don't have a return ticket either. We finally got called over to the booth next door while our guy dealt with the problem man. The man was very pleasant and welcomed us back. I showed him the cruising permit before he had a chance to inquire about our return, so all was cool. It was a little hard to hear him over the band though.
Our flight into Nassau arrived about half an hour too late to get the last Bahamas Air flight to Marsh Harbor, so we are spending the night here. The only thing I cared to see in Nassau anyway was Atlantis and their neat aquarium. We had checked out Atlantis, and the cheapest room was $370. However, you can stay at a Comfort Suites right next door for $160, and get full privileges at Atlantis to use their pools, beach, aquarium, charge meals and drinks to your room, etc. Let me think about this for a minute...
So, we grab a cab out of the airport to the hotel. The cab driver was a very friendly man who spoke very clearly so we had no trouble understanding him. He was interested in our story of cruising, and we had a great conversation for the thirty minutes or so it takes to get from the airport to Paradise Island where the hotel is. As we passed the cruise ship docks, there was the Disney Magic. That damn boat is following us everywhere. First Norfolk, then Key West, now here. Going through the busy downtown area we went through an intersection that had a traffic light, but it was turned off. In the center of the intersection was a policewoman standing on a eighteen inch wooden cube directing traffic. She was in the typical white fancy uniform with white hat that the police here wear, and was very animated with both hands directing the traffic which was whizzing only inches from her on both sides. A few blocks later, the cabbie tooted his horn at a very official looking black Ford Crown Victoria passing in front of us. The lady in the back seat waved and smiled at the cab. He told us it was the deputy prime minister. He said when she is at the airport waiting for a flight somewhere, she will occasionally come out to the taxi driver lounge and play dominoes with the drivers. Somewhere in the conversation, he told us about his three kids. His daughter is a nurse. His youngest is a fifteen year old boy and he is encouraging him to come to the States to be trained as a nurse too. Apparently men here have not relaxed gender stereotypes, because the kid thinks the idea of a male nurse is out of the question. He told us about his oldest son, who is a diesel specialist and works for Atlantis (I suspect they have their own power plant or at least big-ass generators for backup). Apparently the son went to college in the US. When he left he was a typical island kid who doesn't think nearly as much about racial differences as people in the States do. When he came back from college, he was all into stuff about "his African heritage". His father was astonished that "he had to go to America to college for four years to figure out he was black". It is refreshing here how race seems to be a non-issue. At least it has been with everybody we have encountered.
We got checked in the hotel and followed a long maze of hallways and a hidden elevator to finally find our room. The room was fine although it had a strong smell like it might have been painted that morning. Or they used some strong chemicals to clean up the smell from the body - just kidding. The room was a very interesting orange color, similar to the color of Tang powder. To add to the effect, the sheer curtains were also orange so the sunlight coming through them added to the glow of the room. I turned the vent fan on full blast and we headed over to Atlantis. We passed through the casino and found the place where you show them your hotel card and get a wristband which allows you access to the pools, beach, and aquarium. Last time I was here we snuck in, so it was nice being legal. We actually were challenged for the wristbands twice, it was good to be legal.
We grabbed a drink at the pool bar and headed into The Dig, which is the aquarium. The motif through the whole aquarium is to make you feel like you are undersea in an archeological dig of the lost city of Atlantis. You really get the feeling of scuba diving without all the hassle, more so than most aquariums. We saw the huge ray that I remember from my visit a few years ago. After looking at all the cool fish, we headed to the casino. We budgeted $100 each to gamble, and set about finding the best slot. The slots here have a feature I had not seen before. You put your money in, then choose whether you want it to be a $.25, $.50, or $1.00 machine. Of course the default is $1.00, so if you forget to push the button to select $.25 your money is gone before you know it. Over the course of an hour or more, Barb lost her $100, but I was up $40, so we were net down $60. Not bad for the fun.
We left the casino and went for a walk around the Atlantis marina. This marina is fairly small in that it only holds about twenty boats, but those twenty boats are mega-yachts. The first we noticed was Themis which we saw in Charleston both on our way northbound and southbound. Themis belongs to a lawyer who gets seasick. I would bet the boat came over with just the crew and he flew over to meet them. When I was here a few years ago, it was the first time I was up close and personal with a bunch of mega yachts. Doesn't matter how many I see, they are still amazing.
We walked around the shopping area next to the marina and decided to have dinner at a place called Bimini Cafe. It had an attractive beach look to it. We wanted to sit outside and there was a twenty minute wait, so we went to the bar. I had my first Mojito in the islands, and it was quite good. Mojito's seem to be one of those drinks that vary dramatically from bar to bar, or even from bartender to bartender in the same bar. We were eventually seated on the patio. We ordered conch fritters (our first since getting here) and they were quite tasty. For dinner, Barb had fish tacos, and I had grilled grouper. For the price, the meals were a little disappointing. Speaking of the price, we use to think that New Orleans was an expensive city. But now that we have been eating out in the Bahamas, New Orleans seemed downright cheap.
GPS N 26-32.806 W 77-03.207 Miles made good this leg 0. Total miles covered 3693.
Jan 17
We are flying back to Marsh Harbor today, but not until 15:00, so we have all morning to play. We were up and out of the hotel by about 09:00. On the corner by the hotel was a restaurant that apparently only recently started serving breakfast because they had a hand written sign on the door announcing the fact. We went in and were only the second table filled. We had very good omelets although I found a strange pricing anomaly. Barb ordered a Country Omelet, which had ham and cheese and hash browns, for $11. They had a 'build your own' omelet with up to three ingredients for $10. It didn't say it came with hash browns which was fine with me. I ordered a build your own with bacon, cheese, and peppers for $10. Well, it did come with hash browns, so apparently the extra dollar Barb paid was just because it had a name.
From here we walked to the top of the bridge between Paradise Island and Nassau proper. From the top of the bridge we can see the marinas and Barb can appreciate what we missed by not coming here in the boat. I don't recall the strong current through this harbor when I was here with Brian and Tammy a few years ago, but you can tell from here it is rushing through. We could see the marina where we had planned to stay. Just as well we did it by plane.
I had an interesting feeling today. When we got to the airport yesterday and heard the music, I felt like we were back in the islands. But, being here around Atlantis, I feel more like we are in Orlando at Disney World than in the islands. It will be good to get back to the boat later today.
We headed back to Atlantis to try our luck again. This time, I left Barb at a machine and went to the one that was good to me yesterday. It teased me a lot, but after awhile I had lost my $100. I went to find Barb, expecting her to be about through her $100 also, but instead found her with a payout ticket for $218. She hit a big one and cashed it out, then started playing again with her last $20 cash. She played that off and then $5 more, so we cashed the ticket and left with a $13 profit. We went out to the pool bar and had a couple of fruity boat drinks, then headed back to hotel to get our bags and grab a cab.
We got checked in with Bahamas Air and were back in Marsh Harbor at 15:50. Joe, our taxi driver was waiting for us as promised, and he whisked us back to the marina. The big news while we were gone was a storm that came through Saturday. Apparently it blew over 50 knots at it's peak, and blew hard all day Saturday and Sunday. We heard that the boat next to us snapped a dock line, but the marina staff was here and put a new line on it before any damage was done. Ronnie the marina guy told me that our boat rode it out fine. Other than the boat being covered with salt from the spray that the wind whipped up, all appeared normal on deck.
When we opened the companionway, we were greeted by the security officer yelling at us for leaving him alone through the storm. He had a lot to say as he usually does when we have left him for a few days. Other than his yelling, everything below was fine also. As we came down the dock, one of our neighbors informed us that the RMHYC was having a happy hour at 17:00 at Curly Tails, a restaurant/bar at the next marina over. How nice - a welcome back party for us.
The only problem we found upon returning was there was no internet service. After returning from happy hour, I gave up and used the sat phone to receive seventy-eight messages. We had not taken the computer with us, so we had a lot. Unfortunately, one of them was from our friends Dan and Jaime on Nereia. Last we knew, they were at the Exuma Land and Sea Park, and we were hoping to catch up with them in Georgetown. Well, they had to go back to Nassau, and were there yesterday when we were just kicking around. Had we known, we could have visited with them.
GPS N 26-32.806 W 77-03.207 Miles made good this leg 0. Total miles covered 3693.
Jan 18
Today was forecast to be very windy and rainy due to another strong cold front coming through. The morning was pleasant, with a gentle breeze from the west. About noon, dark clouds were approaching from the northwest, and finally about 14:00 it came through. Initially, it was no big deal. The wind switched to the north, and it sprinkled a little. Later about 16:00, the wind picked up, but it never did really rain enough to rinse the salt off the boat from the last storm. Guess we'll have to actually wash it.
The internet still did not work at all until about 16:00 when it started working sporadically. I heard on the net this morning that a transformer that powers some part of the radio system that makes it all work here blew in the weekend storm, and it wasn't fixed yet. Things like power outages or phone outages take days and even weeks to fix in the islands. I've spent the better part of the day writing the logs since I didn't have the computer with me in New Orleans. I had figured it was just one more thing to carry, the internet service at the hotel was $10/day, and I wouldn't have time to write anyway.
The barge which has been replacing broken pilings in the marina behind us finished it's work and left today. Darn, I'm gonna miss all that noise. They were making a nice breakwater stopping the waves from slapping the rear of the boat so much.
We did rib night at the Jib Room again tonight. This is probably our last Wednesday night here, so we want to enjoy that one more time. As usual, the ribs were great and despite the weather being iffy, the crowd was large. We taxied to and from the Jib Room, since the water is pretty rough with the high winds and we would've gotten wet in the dinghy. Besides, I stowed the dinghy on the boat before we left and didn't want to redeploy it since we will be leaving in a few days. As we entered the marina, we could hear music coming from Snappa's, the bar next door. It was a guy named Brown Tip, who plays "rake and scrape". We had heard of Brown Tip and rake and scrape since we got here, but had never caught his act. What rake and scrape is, is raking a metal object, like a dinner knife, along the edge of a carpenter's saw. You place the handle of the saw against your shoulder and hold the end of the blade in your outstretched hand. You then scrape the edge of the saw blade with the blade of the knife and bend the saw blade appropriately to make different sounds. This sounds like a toy a couple of our friends back home ought to have (Bud, Dave?). In Brown Tips case, he sings along with prerecorded music and adds the saw while another guy played maracas. Similar to Junkanoo, the beat gets repetitious after a few songs. After all, how much can you do scraping the edge of a saw? But it was another local thing we had wanted to see before moving on.
GPS N 26-32.806 W 77-03.207 Miles made good this leg 0. Total miles covered 3693.
Jan 19
Still windy, cool and overcast today. There never was any rain, and it's still shorts and t-shirt weather (low 70's), so what am I complaining about. The overcast made it seem colder and gloomier than it really was.
I did a couple of things off our list to do before we can move on. I went through the mail that our friends Dave & Carolyn, and Michelle & Terry carried to New Orleans for us. We had not gotten our mail since Dave & Carolyn brought it to Key West for us in early November, so there was a considerable pile of it. So, when Dave & Carolyn, who were flying, got it from the UPS Store, and saw how much it was, they diverted it to Michelle & Terry who were driving from Houston. We went through and trashed the obvious stuff in New Orleans, but today I went through the keeper stuff and dealt with it. We had a few important things, like the renewal of the boats official papers from the Coast Guard, the cat's permission to enter the Bahamas (we didn't mention him when we checked in), and the new insurance policy for the boat.
I also defrosted the fridge and checked out the bilge pump which I thought was malfunctioning. Turns out the bilge pump is pumping perfectly. It's just seems to be quieter than it use to be so you barely hear it when it runs. To make sure it was working, I pulled the speed transducer out of the bottom of the boat to let water in. For you non-boaters, the speed transducer is a inch and a half diameter plug in the bottom of the boat. It's a little disconcerting to pull the plug on your boat, but it was easier than dragging the garden hose inside to fill the bilge enough to trip the pump.
GPS N 26-32.806 W 77-03.207 Miles made good this leg 0. Total miles covered 3693.