Georgetown Passage – Day 2, Part III, 12-31-08

We left you at sundown, preparing for a day on the water and land.
Still no green flash, but we’ll keep watching!

Another lazy morning, despite having, again, watched the sun come up,
complete with a lovely rainstorm. We took advantage of all the fresh
water to first wash the boat, and then, us, in the rain. We’ve been
taking salt water baths, using either boatsoap, a specially formulated
soap designed to maintain foamy output even in salt water, or Joy dish
soap, a pleasant surprise in that it’s mild enough to use as a shampoo
and body wash, but, in addition to allowing salt-water dishwashing,
makes a great salt water bathing product.

The Boy Scouts, in their “Extreme Adventure” series which includes
sailing the Florida Keys, use it exclusively for bodies, tools,
dishwashing and clothing washing, all in salt water, so, we do, too :
{)) Anyway, thanks to the tip of one of our cruising buddies, we
learned that if we keep towels specifically for salt water use, and
dry with those after our rinse cycle (jump in to get thoroughly wet,
soap, jump in again and scrub all the soap off you, climb out again),
your body doesn’t have any of the typical salt residue from salt water
immersion. None the less, we enjoyed our fresh water showers, despite
our turning right around later and going in again…

We wondered if the rain would keep up all day, but before noon, the
sun had come out and the clouds had cleared. So, the sun comes out,
and so do we. This area is full of ruins of prior housing, presumably
left over from the drug-running days, and we went to explore some of
it. We also wanted to explore one of the tiny islands which were out
in the middle of the area in which we were anchored, as well as some
of the stuff in the northern part of where we’re anchored, which I’ll
detail in a bit.

So, off we go in the dinghy, headed to what looks like a chateau with
a couple of turrets in the distance. It turned out to be very close
by, and what we presume to be a house in interrupted construction, as
there were concrete blocks and bags of concrete present, but only the
concrete frame of a very small house, the pointy ends of which were
what we’d taken for turrets.

We’ve found a curiosity here in the Bahamas. In addition to the clear
water, there’s NO mold. The concrete floor of this house, and later
ones we’d explore, despite obvious years of exposure to the elements,
had not the first bit of mold or slime on the floor, still wet with
the rain from earlier in the day.

From there we just waded to the small island with the single palm tree
on it. However, we had to be very careful where we walked, as
everywhere you looked the bottom was covered in conch – infant or
adolescent, as they were small and had not even a suggestion of the
lip which flares out, signifying maturity, at their sides. There were
literally hundreds of conch, for hundreds of feet on each side of our
walk over. We also saw the same in the shallow areas around the
island. I managed to cut my feet on a couple of them during the day…

On the way back to our dinghy, secured on the limestone of the island
with the “chateau”, we saw a nurse shark in the shallows – not a foot
deep, meandering around. Unfortunately we were not able to get close
to it before it moved on, but it was a beautiful animal, probably
about 8’ long, graceful in its movements, and we’d have loved to get a
closer look. Ah, well, we presume there will be other opportunities as
we move through the Bahamas.

From there we dinghied over to a boat we’d wanted to chat up and
learned that they’d succeeded in finding eating-sized conch in the
shallows at the north end. We resolved to go visit that area, but
first we went to the plane…

At low tide, nearly all of it is out of the water, and only a portion
of the cabin and the base of the vertical stabilizer remain intact
above low water. However, the rest of the structure of the plane
remains in relatively good condition, between 1 and 4 feet under
water, depending on the tide state. When you’re floating around over
it, its size is very impressive! We presume it was not shot down,
but, instead, ditched, as the wings and tail plane were intact and in
position…

Moving north, it got so shallow that we got out and pulled the dinghy
as we foraged for conch. At first, it was all the tiny ones, but soon
we found an area with more promise. If we’d been diving, we could
have seen them readily, but they were in only a foot or two of water,
so we just waded along. Eventually, we picked up about 3 dozen
promising specimens. It was such overload that we looked at each with
a critical eye, and culled any which didn’t have a pronounced lip. We
learned in one of our books that the lip determines maturity, and
unless it had a notable flare, we threw it back. At that, we were left
with 18 very sizeable conch, and headed back for dinner!

Once on the boat, it was getting a bit late to start with the cleaning
of the conch, so I devised a conch anchor – I put the animals in a
laundry bag, and tied its cinch line to our dinghy chain and rope
rode, and lowered it to the sea floor. It proved very effective as an
anchor, as it held us from turning in the wind and current changes.
As conch live on the microbes which pass their area, and we have a
good current running here, I presumed they’d do just fine down there.
However, again, reading some of our library, we learned that the
several fish that we found on the bottom of the dinghy weren’t, in
fact, “food” but instead Cardinal fish that use the shells of mature
conch to hide and forage, as well.

New Year’s Eve is a pretty subdued affair here in the out islands, and
while we saw several instances of fireworks, we later learned that the
party at McDuff’s, the restaurant associated with the beach club at
the end of the landing strip, had a quiet gathering of many cruisers.
We had a light dinner, relatively late for us these days, after 7PM.

We expected to go to sleep early, but between all that was happening
aboard, and our reading in bed, we didn’t get to sleep until the next
year. We drifted off to sleep with the sounds of the last local
fireworks gently booming in the distance. As, again, this is getting
long, I’ll leave you here and pick up in our next post,

As always, those on our log lists will receive real-time reports, but
those seeing these in the forums will have to wait until we have good
internet connectivity. There’s no internet service here, and we don’t
know when the next will be, but you can see our progress on our SPOT
page, http://tinyurl.com/FlyingPigSpotTracking …

Stay tuned :{))

L8R

Skip and Crew

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery !
Follow us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog
and/or http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog

"And then again, when you sit at the helm of your little ship on a
clear
night, and gaze at the countless stars overhead, and realize that you
are
quite alone on a wide, wide sea, it is apt to occur to you that in the
general scheme of things you are merely an insignificant speck on the
surface of the ocean; and are not nearly so important or as self-
sufficient
as you thought you were. Which is an exceedingly wholesome thought,
and one
that may effect a permanent change in your deportment that will be
greatly
appreciated by your friends."- James S. Pitkin

Skip Gundlach wrote:
Georgetown Passage – Day 2, Part III, 12-31-08

We left you at sundown, preparing for a day on the water and land.
Still no green flash, but we’ll keep watching!


I wonder if our eyes are different - those who see it and those who
don't. I've watched sunset after sunset w/o seeing it once. My wife has
seen it many times.

"slide" wrote in message
...
Skip Gundlach wrote:
Georgetown Passage – Day 2, Part III, 12-31-08

We left you at sundown, preparing for a day on the water and land.
Still no green flash, but we’ll keep watching!


I wonder if our eyes are different - those who see it and those who don't.
I've watched sunset after sunset w/o seeing it once. My wife has seen it
many times.


When I was in school in San Diego, we used to have a sunset appointment just
about every day to look for it. I've seen it several times, but rarely.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

"Capt. JG" wrote in message
...
"slide" wrote in message
...
Skip Gundlach wrote:
Georgetown Passage - Day 2, Part III, 12-31-08

We left you at sundown, preparing for a day on the water and land.
Still no green flash, but we'll keep watching!


I wonder if our eyes are different - those who see it and those who
don't. I've watched sunset after sunset w/o seeing it once. My wife has
seen it many times.


When I was in school in San Diego, we used to have a sunset appointment
just about every day to look for it. I've seen it several times, but
rarely.



Did it morph into a reptile at any time?

Wilbur Hubbard