Windlass Blues in Georgetown
Karen:
Georgetown is the hub of the Exumas and has a reputation for being very busy and full of cruisers and boaters. It's the end of the line for the cautious and from there, the islands are more remote and wild. We are at the end of the cruising season right now. Most insurance companies will only insure you until June 1 to be in this area, as the hurricane season officially starts then. So, most people cruise the Bahamas from Jan - May and head back home to be compliant with their insurance. We have extended navigation insurance (it costs WAY more). What we gather is that the true hurricane danger zone for this area is more like August/September. So, we are aiming to be as far south as possible as soon as possible. We are also learning that we are pretty slow :). We will wait for the right weather windows and not put ourselves at unnecessary risks. The prevailing winds are the trades, that blow South East, exactly in the direction we need to go. Good sailing windows are pretty rare, and we need to jump on them. It also means a lot of motoring or motor sailing. However, the way back up the chain next year will be a breeze 🙂
All this to say that we found Georgetown to be empty. A few boats at anchor and massive mooring fields with no boats. Most other cruisers we met at the fuel dock are heading south like us to places like Guatemala, Trinidad or Dominican Republic.
We went ashore to get a meal out. We happened on a local BBQ fundraiser for a local church and bought plates of BBQ fish, chicken with veggies and rice and some cold drinks and ate in the park. Ahhhh a meal I did not cook. We also poked around at a straw market with lots of touristy gifts. Flo decided she wanted to buy her dad a t-shirt for a birthday gift with her own money. She picked it out and we hid it in the shopping bag I had brought. We walked out and met up with Michael to explore the town. ‘What’s in the bag?’ he asked? Oh nothing. But he wouldn't stop asking. He started getting really upset with us that we wouldn’t show him and would not let it go! We walked around the lagoon in the blazing sun and he wouldn’t stop asking about it, getting more and more upset with us, which made us giggle.
Our immigration paperwork allows us 30 days in the Bahamas only. We have about 10 days to go and are not sure we can exit by that date. So we walked into the local Immigration office and asked for an extension. We learned that it would cost us $200 per person to extend our stay. No thanks!! So now we have that added time pressure.
Unfortunately when we had anchored up in Shroud Cay, our windlass stopped working. It was making some funny sounds and tripping the breaker quite frequently, but it finally packed it in. So Michael has been troubleshooting, I have been helping where I can. He learned from the previous owner that the windlass had been replaced by Lewmar, due to some issues with the solenoid. So we think that may be the problem. It's still under warranty, so we’ll follow up with Lewmar. But in order to save time, we ordered 2 more solenoids and shipped them to Long Island, our next destination. This all happened surprisingly quickly, and so we have fueled up, and are going to make the jump over to Calabash Bay tomorrow. This means Michael will be pulling up the Anchor manually - 80ft of chain and a 75 lb anchor. He has a pulley system rigged and the kids have been assigned supporting roles, and I will be at the helm. Let’s see how that goes!
