Day 243

This morning we decided it was calm enough and the fact that we haven’t had a wind instrument (tells wind speed and direction) since we left Nassau on day 156... basicaly that day Grama was mad and said she didn’t want to see any more 30 knot winds and the wind instrument quite working and we haven’t had it since. So I was going to go up the mast and see if there was any obstructions blocking the instrument from spinning and working and I took up some corrosion lock to try and see if that would help.

In going up the mast I have the bosun’s chair but it would be hard for papa to grind me all the way to the top so I have to literally climb the mast. By the time I got to the top I was exhausted! I played with the wind instrument for a while and applied a ton of corrosion block but it was still stiff and we think it has permanently seized and we’ll need to replace it when we get home. When we determined that I stopped and just looked around at the view. From here I could see over to the ocean, all of hope town and alot of boats lol. I said to Grama that I should have brought the camera up and she agreed so I told her to attach it to the spinnaker halyard and send it up...well there was another little problem with that, the spinnaker halyard doesn’t come to the top of the mast it goes to about 4’ down from the top. So I had to stretch and struggle mostly out of the bosun’s chair and grab it with my toes and hoist it up...in doing so the straps on the bosun’s chair were moved to awkward spots and I no longer think I have a right boob but I did get some nice pictures.

By the time I was back on the deck we had to get ready to move to marsh harbour. We got everything ready to quickly go into the fuel dock before we were to head out and then we found out there was a long line up for the fuel dock and we had to sit and wait for quite a while. So we decided to run the engine so we would be ready to slip our lines and go...and the engine over heated and the alternator started to smell...like it did when we first put it on. Papa played with the engine but couldn’t find anything wrong or different but the alternator wouldn’t do its third step up and was making a squealing noise =/.

We finally got to the fuel dock and filled our diesel, gas and water tanks and then we headed to Marsh Harbour. It was an easy sail and we were in and anchored and off the boat in no time. We went looking for a mechanic and booked a guy to come out tomorrow morning.

Niki