Wednesday, December 25, 2019
Georgetown, Exuma, Bahamas
23.31.068N
75.45.461W


Merry Christmas one and all!  As you can see, we made it to Georgetown. 

Neither Dale nor I really slept very well last night as we were both nervous about getting underway again which means, we were awake before the sun and only moved once it came up.  We started the engines at 6:45am and slowly backed out of our slip at Cave Cay Marina.  The “boss” (we assume owner who keeps a very low profile) actually waved goodbye to us as we backed out, pivoted and then exited the protected harbor. 

Once out into the channel, we turned into the wind and tried to raise the main sail.  It only made it about 2/3-3/4 up before it jammed.  Dale donned his life jacket and went to investigate.  We lowered it a few feet, tried again and it jammed again.  We went through this once more with the same results when he found the problem.  One of the batten end pieces was cracked and just below it there was a tear in the webbing holding the feeder line to the sail.  Dale reported back, “the sail’s torn”.  Of course it is!!  I freely admit that the last 2 months of fear, frustration and life in general, finally got the better of me and I burst into tears. 

Dale offered to take the wheel but I was raised on a farm where you get back up on the horse that bucked you, no matter how many times it bucks you (someday I’ll go into detail about a few Shetland ponies that threw me many, many times).  So, I finished my shift which included going back out the cut that we had lost our engines in.  We lowered the main to a reefed position and unfurled the Code Zero to take advantage of the wind coming from behind us.  As the wind weakened mid morning, we added the engines back into the mix and then finally brought in both sails and motored the remainder of the trip by early afternoon.

Once it was Dale’s shift, I thought about a plan to repair the sail as I have a heavy duty sewing machine brought along for just such an event.  Dale reminded me that we went through many similar trials on our first trip 2005-2007.  I reminded him that those happened over the course of 18 months not 2.  He thinks we’re just getting it all out of the way now. 

We arrived in Georgetown about 1:30pm and found a spot not too far from “Chat n Chill”.  We anchored in our normal fashion and in spite of getting the tug of a well set anchor, we sat and watched it for about 30 minutes just to make sure.

It looked like every one and their brother was on the beach, so we lowered the dinghy and went in to see if the local hang out was open.  It wasn’t, it was one of the famous boater pot lucks and we were empty handed, so we went back to the Palace and took naps.

Later in the evening, we had hoped to call the kids to wish everyone a Merry Christmas but . . . you guessed it . . . the sat phone is not working.  Why should it?  It worked a week ago, but not so much now.  Dale added it to his list of things to fix/repair in exotic places.