Warderick Wells Cay, Exumas April 10-13 2009
Safely at anchor in Warderick Wells, the location of the headquarters
of the National Park for the Bahamas, the only visible WiFi signals
were from the park itself. I reluctantly signed on for a three-day
package.
The provider here, while giving an excellent connection, is a metered
subscription. One is allowed 100 megabytes per day, or allocated in
full over whatever subscription period you choose. Thus, your data or
time allotment determines when you're cut off.
There was some sort of glitch, however, and after our first evening of
connectivity, we'd somehow lost nearly a day's worth of data allotment
overnight. As it's volume sensitive, they give you a meter, and I'd
kept careful watch on it, so I knew of the discrepancy.
Good thing, too, because the first evening we'd used much more than a
day's data allotment. We finally figured out that facebook and other
web-based stuff was the culprit. Lydia does most of her communication
with family and friends through facebook, Shutterfly and youtube now,
and every page refresh (which it does every few minutes, and, of
course, every time you check it or post something) eats up several
megabytes. The techie there gave me a restart, not having an easy
means to adjust the allotment by taking a new charge for 3 days (which
started the clock and data allotments), and cancelled the old one. In
the end, we had almost a day's allotment left on our departure, so we
made out very well, having well overshot our first day's allotment.
This experience makes me all the happier that I use a mail client
(Outlook Express, or in Vista, Microsoft Mail, the newer label for the
same functionality and feel), where all I do is pull down the mail,
and don't have to be on line to either compose or read, a comfort not
present in web browsers or web-based mail (or for that matter,
web-based anything). I'd not known how big the web-based files were,
but it's obvious it's huge. Lydia's often complained about connections
in marginal areas, but I've come to conclude that it's because the way
she uses the Internet - it's very volume-intensive. Sometimes, our
throughput (the amount of data that can pass in a given time) is
similar to dialup speeds. As seen in some of the Georgetown logs,
sometimes that is due to the number of users on the system, but
sometimes it's just a matter of our signal strength. We'd been seeing,
but not quite able to connect to, the park signal all the way down in
Cambridge Cay. The closer we get, the faster it goes :{))
Thus, in remote locations, I can pull down my nntp Usenet newsgroup
(rec.boats.cruising) and my emails in one go, read and respond to
them, even offline, and have them get uploaded the next time I'm at a
useable connection. Of course, for those still landbound (other than,
perhaps, on a slow dialup connection), with broadband, full-time at
their disposal, this is of little concern, but for us cruisers out in
the remote areas we visit, it's crucial to be able to use tiny
bandwidth.
Of course, for serious matters, even in the middle of the ocean, we
have sailmail, the high-frequency radio Single Sideband-based email
program, over which I've posted logs reports in the past.
Anyway, as it turned out, our time in Warderick wells was brief, due
to the weather window which quickly presented itself - or, risked
slamming shut later, but we had a good time.
Saturday, I took advantage of the early-afternoon low tide and dove
the rest of the boat. As is our custom, if we have the chance, we'd
anchored where there wasn't much water under us at low tide, making it
much easier for me to reach the waterline with my deck broom that I
used to scrub the bottom. As the time before had been at close to high
tide, I had about 2-3' of the entire length of the boat to scrub, but
the water was very much warmer there than anywhere else we'd been so I
was able to stay under a very long time comfortably. It's pretty cool,
walking around on the bottom, and watching the sea life as I scrub. I
had some large fish hanging near me most of the time, and saw a
monster hermit crab scuttling about near the stern. I picked him up,
and banged on the hull for a very long time, thinking to show Lydia
and Louise (her mother) this marvelous creature. Unfortunately for the
shared experience, they thought I was just cleaning some barnacles or
something, and never came to the side, so I had to put him down and
continue with my work. There were interesting craters (well, holes) in
the bottom, and an equal number of hills, both probably about 2 feet
across. I wonder what creates those?
Of course, like everywhere else in the Bahamas, the water was crystal
clear (if you discount the clouds of what I was scrubbing off, and a
bit of the ablative bottom paint we had, that I stirred up). However,
by standing right next to the hull, under where I was working, my air
bubbles carried off my debris. I don't know what changed, but this
time I got very little water in my mask, for which I was thankful.
When I'm looking up as I do (the opposite of most diving positions),
any water which gets in the mask can run down my nose. My cure for
that is to blow it out the regulator (which is no problem), but some
of it inevitably gets swallowed, and constant salt water in my mouth
has always dried it out. Whatever it was, I didn't have that much to
deal with this time. In any event, by the time I finished, the hull
was clean, and we'd find later that it really helped our speed.
During one of our relatively longer-scoped (a lot of chain out)
anchorings, done when I use two anchors, I'd noticed that the section
of chain which rarely gets used was pretty grunged up with salt. I
took the opportunity to let all but the last couple of feet out in
this very calm anchorage, hoping to have the sand scrape some of it
off.
Saturday was Easter evening, with a potluck hors deorvres BYOB
get-together on the beach. As low tide was fully under way, we had to
make several passes at finding the route into the beach where this was
occurring, but we got there in good time. It was so low, and so flat
there, that we walked the dinghy in a few hundred feet, knowing that
the tide would rise later. As it was, when the party broke up, quite a
few of the dinghies being fetched had their owners with wet shorts
:{)) Several cruisers we'd met in different anchorages were there, and
we made several new friends as well. It got a bit buggy toward the
end, but we had a good time there none the less. The trip home allowed
us to go close to the park office, previously all exposed rock and
coral, so it was a lot shorter!
Sunday, Easter morning dawned beautifully, as has nearly every day we
have been in the Bahamas. The park put on an Easter Dinner, with
boaters bringing a side dish, with solicitations having gone out
beforehand by the park personnel. We brought a pasta-cheese-broccoli
casserole which, if eaten as a dinner, would easily have fed 5;
evidently everyone liked it, as there was absolutely nothing left in
the dish afterwards!. This, and the other side dishes other cruisers
brought accompanied the turkey and ham the park provided. The park
also provided ice for both gatherings, so had we known, I'd probably
have brought a mug for our Cokes, as I like chewing ice nearly as much
as anything else I'd put in my mouth, but, in particular, I really
like icy cold Coke instead of whatever temperature it comes out of the
can :{))
One of the special treats we'd wanted to experience was the bananquit
birds on the park office's porch, where we took our bounteous banquet
to eat. These tiny birds have come to expect handouts; indeed, they
were a bit of a nuisance at the serving table, landing to steal a bit
from the food, even with people right there with a spoon or fork! They're
tame enough that they'll eat out of your hand. Indeed, I had one
instance where they were fighting for space - and I've got a big
hand! - when I put a few crumbs of carrot cake in my palm. Others of
them perched on my and Lydia's plate's edge while I was eating. We'd
been told we could bring sugar to tempt them, but they didn't really
need that. However, having brought some, we put sugar on the railing
in a trail, and there were dozens of them.
It's a real treat to watch them eat, because they clean each other's
beaks of the crumbs which accumulate. Their tongues, very narrow, and
appearing as they use them sort of like a snake's, but without the
fork at the end, seemed to come out of the roof of their beaks. Fully
stuffed, we waddled back to our dinghy which we had to drag back into
deep water, despite our having anchored it well out from the beach, it
being a falling tide after we got there. We met a few more new folks,
and a couple more of cruisers we'd encountered along the way, on this
trip, too. Our boat card file is well over 150 by now.
When we returned to the boat, we took advantage of having all the
chain out to inspect the chain locker. There was a lot of chipped
paint debris in the bottom, so I vacuumed it out and then poured a
pitcher of water down the limber hole. Those following us from our
refit days know that the limber hole leads to a PVC pipe which, over
the 30 or so years that these boats have been out there, tend to get
clogged up. I wound up drilling out, with a 6' drill bit I had left
over from some consulting and training I did for the security alarm
industry, a very fully impacted sticks-and-mud clog in there at the
time.
As expected, though, this time it was free, quickly sucking down the
couple of gallons I poured in there after the first test. Once that
was done, I pulled up most of the excess chain, which, due to some
currents and a very little bit of wind, had gotten fairly clean in the
time it was down, washing it thoroughly as I did so. However, one of
the projects we have for later includes making some sort of dodger
(which we'll do out of some of the sailcloth from our remains of the
main which was destroyed in the wreck) to go over the opening for the
access doors.
That's so when we're in heavy seas and water splashes into the anchor
locker from the hawse holes (despite their having covers on them) and
feed pipe from the windlass, it won't seep down the holes for the
access doors and end up in the vee berth. Of course, that will require
letting both anchor rodes all the way out. It will probably have to
wait until we're either back in the Bahamas, or, if we stage from
there, perhaps in Lake Worth, as where we're going has a really nasty
mud bottom, making for a real chore to wash the chain as it's
restowed.
Because of our expected early departure the following day, we finished
up our internet activities, including phone calls home on the
excellent connection-allowed VoIP Vonage phone setup we have and Lydia
reveling in the renewed data allotment to catch up on her Shutterfly
uploads. Due to our experience early on, I'd been watching the meter
closely, and we'd not used very much on Saturday - but you could
literally see it going down this time :{)) However, as mentioned
earlier, with the new start we were given, we still had close to a day's
allotment left, so we didn't feel too badly about having been given
the extra.
Well, I see this is getting long, as usual, so we'll pick up next time
with our departure from Warderick Wells. There's so much to do here
that we really look forward to our next visit, as we really didn't do
anything other than go to the beach for cruisers' meet-and-greets
(and, of course, stuff our faces with Easter dinner, and feed the
birds).
Stay tuned :{))
L8R
Skip, working on the boat, as always!
Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery !
Follow us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog
and/or http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog
"Believe me, my young friend, there is *nothing*-absolutely
nothing-half so
much worth doing as simply messing, messing-about-in-boats; messing
about in
boats-or *with* boats.
In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter,
that's
the charm of it.
Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your
destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never
get
anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in
particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to
do, and
you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not."
_______________________________________________
Liveaboard mailing list
[email protected]
To adjust your membership settings over the web
http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard
To subscribe send an email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/
To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
The Mailman Users Guide can be found here
http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
