Still in Staniel

Hello to all...yes we're still in Staniel Cay. The wind has been 20-25 knots every day with squalls. We can sail this ok but we wonder what the anchorage is like at Black Point where we are headed next. The real danger, I think, in high winds is the boat up wind from you pulling. We are more or less isolated where we are now, off the marina at Staniel Cay and holding well. So we wait for a little moderation in the winds. Also, after Black Point we'll need to go on the 'outside' into Exuma Sound to go to Little Farmers and Georgetown. In these winds the seas are running about 10 feet in the sound. So we stay awhile.

In the meantime, Sue has begun repairing some of the teak that is getting chippy looking while Scott may have actually finished the book. Publisher has 99% of it now except for a few diagrams and some text.

Sleeping is in fits and gasps as even though you KNOW the anchor is fine a big gust will come up and wake you and then you just gotta get up and look. Well, I do!

Of course nothing stops Sue from taking pictures and that's a good thing. Here's some of her latest...

Although Sue has yet to get a bad sunburn, her teak is really a'peeling!!! Time to lightly sand off the 'skin' and paint on some more cetol. It's a sweaty job but someone has to do it. I'll get right on it. Today......tomorrow. For sure this week. It's just so hard to plan with all these squalls!












Scott is still puzzled with the outboard. It will run fine for weeks and then it starts flooding itself while it is running. This of course is because the float is stuck down and has the carb. asking for fuel when the bowl is already full. Eventully, gas comes spewing out the top of the carb and the engine dies. I have a solution but like a lot of what I do...it ain't pretty. I always take the hammer with me in the dingy. When this event happens I open the engine and lightly (well...sort of) tap on the carb to loosen the float. Sometimes this works. Back in Marathon Fl. the guys at Inflatable boats said this was cronic with Nissan motors and the 'fix' was to buy a new carb. I said why would I buy a new carb when I have a perfectly operational hammer? Funny, until I went on a 1.5 mile run by myself to retreive our mail and had to stop 3 times, put the anchor down and do the hammer thing in heavy seas. Really though, I'm not buying an entire carb. to fix the float. I've had it apart a lot and can't make the float stick. In the picture I'm trying to put a little pressure head on the valve that the float works to see if it leaks and the float is fine. It doesn't but I doubt that I'm at the pressure of the fuel pump. As long as I had it apart I sprayed everything with corresion block (my new deoderant) and for the last 4-5 days the motor is working fine (and the chicks are all over me!). Any insight would be appreciated...(Larry...it's not a bad ground!).
So what do you do when Scott is busy at the computer with the internet? For hours? Not a problem. There is always something of interest around. Besides watching the huge mega-yachts trying to moor with a heavy current at the marina, there is always the sea-life to contemplate. This nurse shark (for a long time I thought people were saying'nurff)' came swimming by for me to take it's photo in the shallows. Just don't think about it when you're dingying up to the dock and they are right underneath you. No one would fall in, right? They only want the remains of fish being cleaned above anyway. Right????

Ah....tomorrow is another day.