Now in Eluthera

Hello Everyone

It has been a while since I updated, although there are some new videos in the link above, a lot of videos were disallowed by Youtube as I had the radio on in the background, so some of those I had to put on the facebook page.

After saying goodbye to Roy, who visited for a week, Roy became great crew (being called crew on a sailboat is a good thing – lol) and it was fun catching up again; Michelle and I sailed from Freeport and started exploring the Abacos (The Sea of Abacos and its islands) – we met so many great people and saw some wonderful beaches and towns.

We are now in Spanish Wells in Eluthera, and today tackling the Devil’s Backbone, a notoriously dangerous stretch of reef that needs to be navigated to reach Dunmore, its’ pink beaches and Harbour Island. Books and advice say we need to hire a pilot for this, but we are going to tackle it on our own, I am a big fan of electronic charts and with my three layers of redundancy and constant comparison of Navionics and Garmin charts, we feel fairly confident in attempting this difficult navigation. We will let you know how it goes.

Our Island Wife is working well, and allowed me to fix some website issues yesterday as well as being able to upload updates.

Desperado II is keeping us safe, and other than some issues with our watermaker, we have not had any major problems in the past month, she sailed beautifully from Tillo Bay to Spanish Wells, a 50 mile trip across the Atlantic with depths of over 14,000 feet, you wonder what could be lurking at those depths beneath the deep blue Caribbean water?

I have been spear fishing and conch collecting, which has supplemented our food supply, I have been able to donate some of my catch to other boats, and we have been making our own cracked conch, conch fritters, cleaning our own fish, steaming lobster ect..

We have had sharks, turtles and large fish swimming around our boat, I have had to go under and scrape the growth off the hull, this is a big job, but I have devised a method with a long stick and scrub pad that makes it easier, I use a suction cup to hold me against the hull under the water, but I have lost my ability to hold my breath for over a minute, so it is done in 30-40 second sections.

Beer is very expensive here, a good deal is $50 US for 24 cans (small cans at that), we were at one shop were it was advertised at over $70. Rum is cheap and $13/bottle.

Please let me know if you want more details about anything, I type these off the top of my head, so I would love to share more if I know people are interested.

All the best

Phil (and now Michelle)