First days in the Abacos

Now where did I leave off last time? Oh, yes, we were anchored at Lynard Cay after that bumpy Tuesday passage that made me seasick. Moving on to last Wednesday.

After breakfast last Wednesday morning we set off for Hope Town where we finally caught up with our friends, Rich and Cathy, and their big golden retriever, Bernie, on board M/V Angeleno. Thanks to those winds that kept us at Great Harbor Cay for so long, what should have been a week with our friends ended up being only a couple of days, but at least we got that. We picked up a mooring next to them in the harbor and they dinghied over and took us to lunch at the marina. (Thanks again for lunch!) After lunch we walked up the Hope Town Lighthouse, the only remaining manned lighthouse in the Bahamas. We were treated to spectacular 360o views after climbing the steep 100+ steps to the top. On our way back to the dinghy we looked in at the two small grocery stores to see what they had and bought a few pieces of fresh produce. We shared drinks, snacks and then dinner on their boat and returned to Lady for bed.

Thursday morning Dave and I went ashore for a walk through the town. We stopped at Vernon’s Market & Bakery to buy some fresh made pastries and a couple of produce items for dinner that night. On the way back to our dinghy we stopped at Captain Jack’s and got a bottle of rum. We’d heard rave reviews about their restaurant, but they are still rebuilding from Dorian and won’t open until later this summer. At least their liquor store was open! We ran into Cathy, Rich and Bernie on our way out of Captain Jack’s and decided to return to our boats and prepare to head out of the harbor and up to an anchorage off Dickies Cay outside the mouth of Man-O-War Cay harbor. Cathy and Rich needed to leave early the following morning to start their trek home, and the rising tide out of the harbor next morning would not have been conducive to an early departure. Not having a dog to tend to and no need to warm up our electric motors before departure, Dave and I enjoyed the delicious apple cinnamon scones we’d purchased at Vernon’s while our friends prepped their boat for departure. 

By late morning we were headed out of the harbor and traveled the 4 nm to our new anchorage. An hour later we were rafted together on Lady’s anchor and very cozy. If you’re not familiar with the term, “rafting” is when two boats tie up alongside each other, usually with only one boat’s anchor holding them in place. It allowed us to easily pass between boats, and Bernie always had his humans within sight. We made our own lunches and ate in Lady’s cockpit, retired to our own boats for some down time, then reconvened on Lady for afternoon drinks and snacks, followed by dinner, with brownies, and more rum, for dessert. We all headed for bed around 9pm.

We bid an early farewell to Cathy, Rich and Bernie Friday morning as they started their trek back to the U.S. Dave and I stayed in place and on the boat the rest of Friday. We did some boat chores, pulled out our charts and loosely planned our remaining time in the Abacos, then relaxed in the hammock with our books the rest of the afternoon, had dinner, and retired to bed fairly early. I was still pretty exhausted from Tuesday’s passage and very much needed and appreciated the low key day.

Dave and I set out to dinghy ashore Saturday morning swinging by the catamaran, S/V Tribute, that had just anchored behind us, to say hello. We met Jeff and Melissa, chatted for a bit and planned to meet up for drinks and appetizers later. Dave and I continued into the harbor, tied dinghy to their shiny new public dock, and took a walk. The Abacos were devastated by hurricane Dorian almost two years ago, and the pandemic followed closely on its heels. The islands are in various states of recovery from the hurricane. Man-O-War Cay is a small island with a small resident population of just over 200, but they’re making progress and there is a lot of rebuilding occurring now. As I said, their public dock is new. The Hibiscus Café near it was open as was an amazing coffee shop, which we found on our walk back into town from the outskirts. Lo and behold, we ran into Jeff and Melissa! We all sat outside in the shade enjoying our sinfully sugary treats and drinks, chatting up a storm. We eventually went our separate ways planning to meet on their boat later that evening. We stopped in the grocery store across from the coffee shop and struck pay dirt! It was the biggest, best stocked grocery we’ve seen so far. By U.S. standards it’s very tiny, but for these small islands it was a bonanza. We didn’t need much, but did buy a few items, especially fresh produce! On our way back to dinghy we ordered takeout from the Hibiscus Café. We killed our half hour wait time by walking out of town in the other direction a bit. We chatted with a local man also waiting for his lunch. We learned from him that the resident population of Man-O-War is about 210/220, down about 30-40 people since Dorian, when several left. We also learned that about half of the houses on the island are owned by locals and the other half by foreigners, mostly from the U.S. We bid him farewell when our food was ready and returned to Lady for our late lunch and a relaxing afternoon.

At 6:00pm we headed over to Tribute with some homemade hummus and a pitcher of our boat signature drink, called Indigo Ladies, of course. Jeff and Melissa had out a yummy spread of apples and carrots (more fresh produce!), crackers and dip. Their boat is amazing! It’s a new build, HH50 high performance, all carbon fiber 52’ catamaran. Dave geeked out while Jeff showed him all the cool technology. It’s also a beautiful living space. I’ll let you google them if you want to know more about this amazing vessel. 

We talked non-stop until almost 9pm. We come from different backgrounds, but Dave and Jeff have the same corny sense of humor, Melissa and I weren’t really boaters until we met these guys (who have been around boats forever), we all retired early, we’re all new to living aboard, and we have similar world views. They are heading up to cruise Maine for the summer, our old stomping grounds. Jeff made an interesting observation while we were talking. Where, other than within the cruising community, do people meet strangers for the first time and invite them over for drinks? You don’t turn to the person behind you in the supermarket line and invite them over for drinks. Jeff is so right! We meet all sorts of fun and interesting people cruising and it is especially nice to meet kindred spirits, as we did meeting Jeff & Melissa. We will surely stay in touch, but it’s still a bit sad to have to bid farewell so soon after meeting. Hopefully our paths will cross again next cruising season, somewhere in the Caribbean.

Sunday at lunch time we hauled anchor and ate underway as we backtracked 12 miles to Lynard Cay. Jeff and Melissa raved about snorkeling at “Coral Gardens” off Sandy Cay just two miles from the Lynard Cay anchorage. Wildly Intrepid had also told us about this fabulous spot, but we figured it just wasn’t in the cards since we had really wanted to catch up with our friends in Hope Town which was past Coral Gardens. Now that two couples raved about it, we started to think we may not want to miss it. It would also give us the chance to stop in Hope Town again, which I wanted more time to explore. We’re not really on a schedule, so why miss a hot snorkeling spot? So backtrack we did. We were at anchor back at Lynard Cay in time for afternoon drinks and hammock time.

How was the diving? You’ll have to wait until this weekend’s post to find out. Until then…

Stay safe and take care of each other!’

Berry Islands to Abacos

Two weeks ago we were anchored in Bullocks Harbor off Great Harbor Cay in the Berry Islands, waiting out a big blow of indeterminate time. The winds lasted about a week, so we had extra time at GHC. Since I’m catching up on two weeks, you might want to grab a drink or snack and settle down someplace comfy before you continue reading; this is a long one.

We spent a couple of days exploring by bike. Those folding bikes we’ve been hauling around since 2019 finally earned their keep. We found Shell Beach, which despite its name had no shells, at least not the day we visited. It did provide a lovely walk on a soft, white sand beach, however. It’s on the Atlantic side of the island, so we could see the impact of the big winds on the seas. We also found the resort ruins up the hill from the marina. It must have been quite something back in the day. There was one cement staircase we were able to climb for a more top-down view. The remains of the courtyard include the old pool filled with accumulated rain water now. There’s another ruined resort at the north end of the island that we want to check out when we go back in August, Sugar Beach Resort. We’ll also have to talk to the locals and find out the history of these abandoned resorts. 

We had lunch one day at Brown’s Garden and had a long conversation with the wonderful owner, Ronnie. His wife cooks a delicious meal! We’d hoped for lunch another day at Hammerheads, but it was closed, so we got a quick takeout lunch at the Whitewater Grocery & Restaurant. We both ordered a club sandwich. It was kind of comical. The woman taking our order was telling us it had turkey, ham and bacon, oh, but they were out of bacon. No problem, we can live without bacon. About 5 minutes later she found us in the grocery aisles to tell us they were also out of tomato. I said, “That’s okay, we’re out of tomatoes on our boat, too. We can do without.” Because of the big winds, the mailboat, which also brings food to the island from Nassau (which gets it from the U.S. mostly), had been unable to deliver. That has to be very difficult on the locals when that happens, especially with there being only two tiny grocery stores on the island. 

The best part of being stuck at GHC for 10 days was that we finally caught up with a couple we met in the Dismal Swamp back in mid-November of 2019. We met Alex & Corey of Wildly Intrepid on a clear, chilly afternoon when eight boats transited from the north lock to the Visitor Center dock and tied up for the night. We chit chatted a bit that evening and again the following frosty, 31oF morning. We’ve followed each other on social media since then, but the pandemic had prevented us from meeting up again, at least until the big blow at GHC. We were pleasantly surprised to find that we were finally on the same island chain! They were down at Hoffman Cay (where we had spent two pandemic weeks in March 2020) and were heading to GHC to be out of the winds and to stage to cross back to the U.S. Over the week that we shared the anchorage, we snorkeled a couple of times, walked ashore a bit, and shared several dinners and late nights talking. It was so fun to get to know Alex and Corey beyond their social media (which you can check out yourself on their Wildly Intrepid YouTube channel or their Instagram @Wildlyintrepid). This is one of my favorite parts of cruising, meeting interesting and fun people. It’s always a bit sad to say goodbye, but who knows, our paths may cross again in some unexpected place. 

On Saturday, May 22nd, Dave and I were taking the dingy into the marina to ask a question, when another couple we met in the anchorage waved us over (hello Bob & Pam on Porkpie!). They had just heard that the island was going into lockdown for two weeks and if you went ashore you were stuck. So back to Lady we went and turned on our VHF. Early afternoon, the Royal Bahamas Defense Force (RBDF) broadcast that all boats in the marina or harbor were prohibited from leaving, they even put a military vessel at the mouth of the harbor to emphasize the point. We were told to hail the RBDF with questions, so we did. They gave us instructions to call the local police to get their okay to leave. Okey dokey, we called the police. They were fine with us leaving and told us to hail the RBDF again and tell Lt. Cox that we were okay to leave. Right-O, back on the VHF to hail the RBDF. We relayed the message from the police, but since we weren’t leaving until Monday, we were instructed to hail them right before we left. Dizzy yet? We felt fairly confident that we’d be allowed to leave Monday, but we had one additional step we needed to take anyway. Cruisers are supposed to submit domestic travel health visas when they move from one island group to another. Sunday morning I submitted ours to move from the Berries to the Abacos. They were immediately approved; one more piece of documentation that we were allowed to move. Monday arrive and we saw that Wildly Intrepid had already left for the U.S. Surely we’d be allowed to move, too. Dave hailed the RBDF at 6:00 (before coffee!), gave them the spiel of everything we’d done to get approval and they approved us to leave. Sweet! Not two minutes after our approval, four other boats hailed the RBDF also seeking approval to move on. We started something.

We had a lovely cruise Monday across the Northwest Providence Channel to Cross Harbor on the west side of the south end of Great Abaco Island. It’s not really a harbor, but it was a great anchorage for the calm night, in crystal blue water. We were up early again Tuesday and on our way around Hole in the Wall, the southernmost point of the island, and up the east coast to Little Harbor. About 10 minutes out, we were joined by several dolphins who played in our bow waves for about 15 minutes! I never get tired of watching dolphins do that. Unfortunately, that was the only good part of this leg of the trip. As we neared the point, the seas were not as forecast and it was a miserable 10 hours for me. The seas and winds were almost on our nose, a little to starboard, but the seas were a bit confused and from a couple of directions, so it felt like we were in a washing machine. I was mildly seasick most of the final 8 hours. I never used to get seasick, grrrrrr. The seasickness was exacerbated by the spasms in my midback, which alone can make me feel a little off. I munched on crackers and other carbs all day. I got a couple of hours reprieve when we got to a point where we could change course about 50o to port, aiming toward land while still making forward progress to our destination. This put the wind and waves more on our stern, which doesn’t bother me. Eventually we had to beat back into the seas and winds to get around the next point of land before the cut we needed to pass into. A couple of hours after that we were turning west into the cut for Little Harbor and soon thereafter the reefs and small outer islands cut down the swells and my tummy settled. We anchored off Lynard Cay for the night, a couple of miles north of Little Harbor. Lesson learned, take seasick medications before any long, open-water crossing, just in case, and keep more seasick meds onboard.

It’s almost 5pm and Dave has been in the hammock for about 20 minutes with his drink while I sip mine and type this. Something is wrong with this picture! This is long enough already, so I’m going to stop here and pick it up later with a bonus mid-week post, so stay tuned. I promise to try to post weekly from now on, somewhere between Friday-Sunday.

Stay safe and take care of each other!

Bimini to Great Harbor Cay, Berry Islands

We met a cool couple our first evening in Bimini (if you’re reading this, hi Craig & Roxanne!). We chatted with them for quite a while on our back porch and planned to hook up the next day to ride around the island. Thankfully, Dave & I had leftovers to warm up because we were beat from the passage from the U.S. We slept well that night!

After breakfast Wednesday morning we met up with Craig & Roxanne, rented a golf cart for a couple of hours and tooled around Bimini. The first stop we made was at Nate’s bakery for some coconut bread and cinnamon raisin bread. (Dave made French toast out of the coconut bread next morning- yum!) We all had lunch at CJ’s up the hill from Blue Water Marina- conch all around in one form or another. I had the conch fritters- yum! After lunch we got a tour of their awesome boat. After that, Dave & I went for a swim at a nearby beach, took showers and walked down the road to Big John’s for dinner. I bet that place is hopping in a non-pandemic year. On this night there were just two couples and a guy at the bar. Lovely view, good food, wonderful service.

We caught up with our new friends after dinner and had them over for rum and conversation. They helped us with some planning for our trip to the Abacos and shared a lot of their knowledge of Bahamas to the Virgin Islands when we told them about our plans for next season. Thursday morning we tossed the lines a little after 8am. Craig & Roxanne saw us off. Hopefully we’ll stay in touch. That’s one sad part of cruising, meeting great people and having to part because you’re on different tracks.

We had a plan A and plan B for our crossing to the Berry Islands. Plan A was to go about halfway, anchor off Mackie Shoal for the night and finish the trip to the Berries on Friday. Plan B was to just go straight through to Great Harbor Cay and drop the hook in the dark in the same area we anchored in March 2020. The cruising conditions were gorgeous, so we opted for Plan B. We made good speed, averaging 5.5 knots. Just after the halfway point we started passing clusters of anchored and dormant cruise ships. We passed at least two dozen! Sixteen hours later, just before midnight, we were anchored. We thanked the weather gods with an offering of rum, had some ourselves, then hit the hay.

When we got up Friday morning, Dave grilled cinnamon swirl bread for himself and the coconut bread for me (I’m addicted!). We were very thankful we’d decided to cruise straight through Thursday, because Friday morning a band of showers came through. I don’t think it would have been as serene a cruise from Mackie Shoal to GHC had we opted for Plan A. We busied ourselves with some minor boat tasks during the rain. Right around lunch we dingied to the marina to arrange for a slip for the latter half of hurricane season. We had lunch at their little restaurant shack then dinghied over to the dock near the actual town to explore a bit. We found the local liquor store and bought a bottle of Bahamian dark rum. Then we came across a well stocked, small grocery store and bought a few items, then headed back to Lady for hammock time followed by dinner and a movie.

Today we had to dinghy to the marina for 8am to meet the guy at the marina who could approve and arrange for our hurricane season slip. We had a nice talk with him and headed back to Lady shortly after. Today was boat chore day. I was in the mood. I did some laundry (clean sheets!), thoroughly cleaned our cabin and head, which I’d been aching to do, and thoroughly cleaned the salon and galley. Dave helped clean the spots I couldn’t reach easily. Dave made water, made bread, cleaned the hulls (again), fixed a couple of rattling cabin fans, dried out the bilges and got dinner going in the Instant Pot. By 3:30pm we were cooling off in the water off our stern and shortly thereafter were in our hammocks with drinks. We opted for Dark & Stormies today. It’s neither dark nor stormy here, but the wind did kick up as predicted as a front settles into the area.

The big winds are from the direction we wish to head next. How long they will last is uncertain at this point, according to the forecasts. It’s windy but not bouncy in the harbor (we’re on the lee of the island- the west side, while the winds are from the ENE). Beating into the wind and waves to get to the Abacos would not be a comfortable ride, and we’d probably only make about 4 kts, so we will bide our time here in this very protected harbor and move on to the Abacos when the conditions are more comfortable. Until then, we will spend time exploring the island.

Be safe and take care of each other!

Bimini Bahamas, baby!

We made it! We hauled anchor at 5:00am today and headed for Bimini. The first 3 hours weren’t fun because we passed through a line of squalls. The rain wasn’t as bad as the sea state it created. Let’s say our bows got washed repeatedly in the 6′ seas we saw a lot of, and with a short period. In other words, it was a very choppy ride. Once we cleared those the seas calmed and the rest of the 10-hour crossing was very comfortable and beautiful. We even had a few dolphins play in our bow wakes for a few minutes!

We arrived in North Bimini around 3:30pm. The marina helped us dock, then Dave walked over to customs & immigration for a quick clear in, thanks to my having earlier uploaded all our forms and paid for the cruising permit using their new this year Click2Clear online system (well, new for private vessels).

We’re here for a couple of nights before we move on to Great Harbor Cay and then meeting up with friends in the Abacos.

So excited!

Is that a cruising light at the end of this delay tunnel?

We have some answers, a new target departure timeframe, lots of hope, but no real certainty yet. I’ll start with Dave’s hand.

We finally have confirmation that the inflammation in Dave’s hand and wrist was, in fact, caused by Mycobacterium marinum, as we suspected. If you missed my last post, we suspected this pathogen because of his friend Ian’s experience almost two years ago. The results came on Wednesday, about 24 hours before his Thursday appointment with an infectious disease specialist. They had read his file and themselves suspected M. marinum, but the timely DNA test results made their job easier. They’ve seen it before and they know how to treat it. Dave will start a 3-month course of two antibiotics known to be effective for this bacterium. He will take them for a month then return to the infectious disease doctor to check that (a) they clinically appear to be working (ie-there’s no swelling; there will not be a tissue biopsy), and (b) that his liver and kidneys are handling the antibiotics well. If all’s well, then he will continue the antibiotics for another two months. We know, long-course strong antibiotics aren’t ideal, but neither is a persistent, slow growing bacterium that can spread through the lymph system if not treated properly and completely eradicated. So there you have it.

The M. marinum follow up is only one of the issues keeping us in NH until very late April. Dave also needed a root canal in one of his top, back molars, under an existing crown. His first appointment was yesterday, a couple hours after the infectious disease appointment. What he didn’t realize when he went in was that this is a multi-step process spread out over a few weeks. <Sigh> He goes back to the dental surgeon in two weeks for the final part of the root canal, then he has to go back to his regular dentist a couple of days later to have the crown resealed. Dave is still trying to negotiate the exact dates so we’re not stuck here until early May, but both the dental surgeon and his dentist have April vacations in the latter half of the month, so it’s challenging. Our fingers are crossed that the second part of the root canal can happen a little earlier so his dentist can reseal the crown before he goes on vacation. Our fingers are crossed.

On a more positive delay note, we got our first COVID vaccine dose Wednesday morning! We knew we that meant staying in NH for up to 4 weeks depending on when the second does would be. The flavor of the day was Pfizer, and they automatically scheduled our second dose for April 21st. Besides, that’s that same week as Dave’s infectious disease follow-up, so we were going to still be around anyway. We’re just glad we’ll be vaccinated before we return to the boat.

So where is that cruising light at the end of the delay tunnel?

Once we have our second vaccine dose and Dave’s medical issues are settled we will return to Indigo Lady in Florida. We will have the OceanVolt representative meet us at the marina to review our solar-electric system, we’ll stop by our east coast Florida family for a visit, and then we’ll cast off the dock lines. We hope to meet up with some Florida friends who will be cruising the Keys. We also need to test Lady’s systems on an overnight run, and we can do that in the Keys as well. Then we will likely head to the Bahamas. Alas, it will be the start of hurricane season, or close to it, by the time we arrive. Then I’ll start tracking the weather obsessively and stress about every lo pressure system that comes off South Africa. If I don’t fry myself with stress, or wear down Dave with my incessant worrying about tropical storms, we may cruise the Bahamas into August. At least I won’t be worrying as much about getting COVID, and will be comfortable flying back from the Bahamas when the time comes. Lady will be riding out the rest of hurricane season there in one of their hurricane holes, thus the need to fly back to the US.

That’s where we stand for now. Several things have to come together before we can head back to Florida or consider traveling beyond. We continue to keep our fingers crossed.

Stay safe and take care of each other!

Please continue to hold

Guess where I am. If you guessed New Hampshire, you win.

Dave’s hand continues to improve, but the incision is not completely healed yet. He had the stitches removed Monday, but at the center of the incision line, as you can see in the post picture above, there’s a small hole where his skin is taking it’s time closing up. The doctor wasn’t concerned about it; Dave just has to keep it covered. As the swelling continues to go down he gains more mobility. The doctor told him it could take another month or more to get back to full mobility. He should use but not overuse his hand to help him recover. Just yesterday he got a call from the orthopedic center that one pathology report finally came back with a positive test for an unspecified acid-fast bacillus. We’ve suspected Dave could have been infected with Mycobaterium marinum, which is an acid-fast bacillus, back in late August when he scraped his knuckles on some barnacles. We are still waiting on the results of a DNA test to confirm or refute that. In the meantime, Dave has been referred to an infectious disease specialist for additional treatment to ensure the bacteria get eradicated.

While I’m on the topic of disease… The window for our age group (50-64) to register for the COVID vaccine in NH opens this coming Monday. We will stick around to take care of that. Once we get an appointment date and the hole in Dave’s hand is fully healed, we will make a decision about where and when to do some cruising this season. Until then, we continue to be in a holding pattern.

Dave’s chomping at the bit to get onto the boat to truly start our cruising life. Poor guy. He’s distracting himself with some woodworking projects and brewing.

I’m filling time with small sewing projects and finally *focusing* on some online weather webinars to better understand how the weather impacts me on my boat. I had been dabbling in this, but the spatial visualization necessary is not one of my strengths and it makes my head want to explode. So mostly I’ve been avoiding it. That’s probably fodder for a future post.

I’m not a “plans up in the air” kind of person, so I’m flailing a little in this holding pattern. This is different than the uncertainty of plans while living aboard. I’m not a fan of that uncertainty either, but I’ve gotten used to that. Living aboard is our retirement plan, and that plan involves spending at least part of most days exploring our surroundings both on land and under the water. If conditions aren’t conducive to that or to moving on to our next destination, well, onboard there’s *always* something that needs doing, so we fill those days with those chores.

Right now, here in NH, I feel like I’m just waiting to not be here. If there weren’t a pandemic I’d be filling the time socializing with family and friends and doing volunteer work for AARP, and I’d be very thankful for that. Since that’s mostly not an option right now, I’m trying to fill my time with things that feel productive, like the weather lessons and keeping up with AARP goings-on by attending virtual meetings and trainings. I’m looking forward to the warm spate of weather next week because it means I will try to hook up with some friends for outdoor activities. Waiting, waiting, waiting…I don’t like this endless waiting. Okay, I’ll stop whining now and go find something productive to do.

Stay safe and take care of each other!

Dave’s post-surgery update

Dave’s surgery went well. The doctor removed inflamed tissue but told him the tendons were unaffected. Dave thinks the incision was longer than the doctor had originally expected, but he won’t know for sure until he’s allowed to unwrap the dressing on Sunday. His fingers and hand swelled up quite a bit but the swelling appears to be going down a little, as you can see in the pictures.

He slept a lot when I got him home after the surgery on Wednesday. Yesterday he watched a lot of movies. Dave doesn’t like taking prescription pain meds, but he did so willingly the past two days because he needed them, in addition to the higher than usual doses of Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen he was directed to take. He thinks he’s over the pain hurdle today, though. He woke up only once last night at 3am and took just Acetaminophen which did the trick. Today he’s been doing well on just the Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen (though still high doses). The hardest part for him now is going to be not using his hand until his follow up appointment on the 15th.

I’ve been tending to some boat sewing projects and shopping (online). To keep Dave distracted a bit, I’m reading him Harry Potter. He likes the movies but has never read the books. We’ll also pass some of his recovery time doing some trip planning. We still hope to make it to the Bahamas this season, but we can’t firm up any plans until after Dave’s follow-up appointment.

Once we return to the boat, we still need to have our solar-electric system reviewed by Derek, the only U.S. Ocean Volt rep. Our quick return to NH to quarantine prior to Dave’s surgery (see my last post if you don’t know what I’m talking about) meant we couldn’t hook up with him earlier as we had hoped. Then we need to give our systems an overnight test run, preferably off the Florida coast rather than in the very shallow and busy ICW. Then we’ll need a COVID test and a good weather window before we can jump across the Stream to Bahamas. We’ll see how and when this all comes together.

Stay safe and take care of each other!

I have travel whiplash

We left for Florida on February 15th and we got back to New Hampshire this past Tuesday night, the 24th. That’s four days of driving for 6 days of boat work. Exhausting. We had planned to drive home this weekend (after more boat work), but that plan went out the door after Dave’s call to the surgery center Monday morning.

If you recall from my last post, Dave is having hand surgery soon. When he scheduled the appointment, he asked about what he needed to know or do ahead of time. All he was told was to not eat after midnight the night before surgery. He called from the boat Monday morning to confirm any pre-surgery actions. The woman said he’d be called 3-4 days before surgery to schedule a COVID test. When he asked if that was something he could have done in Florida she said, “You’re in Florida? You weren’t supposed to travel [outside New England] for two weeks prior to surgery.” Really?! That would have been good to know when Dave asked the first time! We wouldn’t have been happy about it, but we definitely wouldn’t have gone to Florida! 🤦🏽‍♀️

Dave asked to speak to someone further up the food chain who could make decisions about waiving this two-week rule. He was put in touch with a manager who listened to him describe our approach to COVID safety and our activities in Florida. We weren’t there for vacation. We were living on and making repairs to our boat, away from other humans. We’d brought all our food from home. Our limited human interactions were always brief and masked. We also pointed to the State of NH guidelines for travel that indicate a person can cease quarantine sooner than 14 days after returning from travel if one gets a COVID test on day 6 or 7 that returns a negative result. The manager agreed with us, put together a plan that included our leaving Florida the next morning and Dave getting a COVID test this coming Sunday. So Monday evening we started closing up the boat and packing up the car. Early Tuesday morning we had a quick breakfast, finished closing up the boat, hopped in the car and started the long drive home.

So we’re home again and laying low. As long as Dave’s COVID test comes back negative, which we’re confident it will, his surgery will proceed as scheduled this coming week. In the meantime, he’s trying to keep busy so as not to obsess about his impending surgery, but not so busy that he makes his hand sore. It’s a delicate balance.

I brought home some boat-related tasks that I will tend to. Once those are done I’ll do some sewing, some reading, and tick off the days until we can return to Indigo Lady and the warmth. I’ll update about Dave’s surgery late next week.

Stay safe and take care of each other!

Well, we’re off… sort of

Well, I’m not writing this from Florida as I’d hoped.

The most important reason for our delay is the photo in this post. Those are Dave’s hands. Notice the large bump on the right hand? He’d been having some swelling on the back side of that hand since October. It was intermittent at first, not nearly as large, and more spread out across the back of his hand; sometimes one section would swell and not another. By December it was more focused near the wrist and more persistent. Since late January it’s been as you see it and it feels less like fluid. Since October he’s seen two primary care physicians, two osteopath assistants and one osteopath; he’s been prescribed exercises and a formed splint; he’s had an x-ray, an ultra-sound guided cortisone injection (effects lasted all of two days) and an MRI. This past Wednesday he finally landed with a hand specialist who told him he needs surgery to remove the inflamed tissue gathering there, to check that the underlying tendons are okay and to repair them if necessary. It will be a short in/out procedure with a two week recovery period. His surgery is schedule for the first week of March.

In the meantime, we’re heading down to the boat in Florida for two weeks to install all the upgrades to our solar-electric system, fix our freezer and make a repair to dingy. The freezer failed the day before we left in September, at the end of our diving trek to the Keys. At least it had good timing. Dingy has rub marks from how we have her mounted under our solar roof and Dave will be adding some rubber in those areas so she doesn’t rub herself into a leak. We’re also hoping that the Ocean Volt representative (only one in the US) will be able to come aboard one day to do a complete system review with Dave.

Our failed (three times now) battery control box (and parts for the port one still onboard) have made it to the USA and are en route to the marina to meet us. We have all the other parts we need here and will bring them down with us along with the non-perishable provisions for 8 weeks (we’d already bought them before Dave knew he needed surgery), and fresh groceries for the two weeks we’ll be there. We want to avoid any long forays out into public since COVID is spiking again down there and they have a couple of those new strains. We’re driving down, so we have plenty of room for all our stuff.

To sum up: We’re driving down to Florida for about two weeks of repairs. We’re returning for Dave’s surgery and will be home until he is healed. After that, we will return to Lady and cruise, possibly through August. Dave is fine with cruising during hurricane season, I’m less willing to do so after July once it tends to ramp up, so that will be a negotiation, but we have to have a functioning boat and hands first. Baby steps.

Stay safe and take care of each other!