Warderick Wells Cay, Exumas April 10-13 2009

Safely at anchor in Warderick Wells, the location of the headquarters of the
National Park for the Bahamas, the only visible WiFi signals were from the
park itself. I reluctantly signed on for a three-day package.

The provider here, while giving an excellent connection, is a metered
subscription. One is allowed 100 megabytes per day, or allocated in full
over whatever subscription period you choose. Thus, your data or time
allotment determines when you're cut off.

There was some sort of glitch, however, and after our first evening of
connectivity, we'd somehow lost nearly a day's worth of data allotment
overnight. As it's volume sensitive, they give you a meter, and I'd kept
careful watch on it, so I knew of the discrepancy.

Good thing, too, because the first evening we'd used much more than a day's
data allotment. We finally figured out that facebook and other web-based
stuff was the culprit. Lydia does most of her communication with family and
friends through facebook, Shutterfly and youtube now, and every page refresh
(which it does every few minutes, and, of course, every time you check it or
post something) eats up several megabytes. The techie there gave me a
restart, not having an easy means to adjust the allotment by taking a new
charge for 3 days (which started the clock and data allotments), and
cancelled the old one. In the end, we had almost a day's allotment left on
our departure, so we made out very well, having well overshot our first day's
allotment.

This experience makes me all the happier that I use a mail client (Outlook
Express, or in Vista, Microsoft Mail, the newer label for the same
functionality and feel), where all I do is pull down the mail, and don't
have to be on line to either compose or read, a comfort not present in web
browsers or web-based mail (or for that matter, web-based anything). I'd not
known how big the web-based files were, but it's obvious it's huge. Lydia's
often complained about connections in marginal areas, but I've come to
conclude that it's because the way she uses the Internet - it's very
volume-intensive. Sometimes, our throughput (the amount of data that can
pass in a given time) is similar to dialup speeds. As seen in some of the
Georgetown logs, sometimes that is due to the number of users on the system,
but sometimes it's just a matter of our signal strength. We'd been seeing,
but not quite able to connect to, the park signal all the way down in
Cambridge Cay. The closer we get, the faster it goes :{))

Thus, in remote locations, I can pull down my nntp Usenet newsgroup
(rec.boats.cruising) and my emails in one go, read and respond to them, even
offline, and have them get uploaded the next time I'm at a useable
connection. Of course, for those still landbound (other than, perhaps, on a
slow dialup connection), with broadband, full-time at their disposal, this
is of little concern, but for us cruisers out in the remote areas we visit,
it's crucial to be able to use tiny bandwidth.

Of course, for serious matters, even in the middle of the ocean, we have
sailmail, the high-frequency radio Single Sideband-based email program, over
which I've posted logs reports in the past.

Anyway, as it turned out, our time in Warderick wells was brief, due to the
weather window which quickly presented itself - or, risked slamming shut
later, but we had a good time.

Saturday, I took advantage of the early-afternoon low tide and dove the rest
of the boat. As is our custom, if we have the chance, we'd anchored where
there wasn't much water under us at low tide, making it much easier for me
to reach the waterline with my deck broom that I used to scrub the bottom.
As the time before had been at close to high tide, I had about 2-3' of the
entire length of the boat to scrub, but the water was very much warmer there
than anywhere else we'd been so I was able to stay under a very long time
comfortably. It's pretty cool, walking around on the bottom, and watching
the sea life as I scrub. I had some large fish hanging near me most of the
time, and saw a monster hermit crab scuttling about near the stern. I picked
him up, and banged on the hull for a very long time, thinking to show Lydia
and Louise (her mother) this marvelous creature. Unfortunately for the
shared experience, they thought I was just cleaning some barnacles or
something, and never came to the side, so I had to put him down and continue
with my work. There were interesting craters (well, holes) in the bottom,
and an equal number of hills, both probably about 2 feet across. I wonder
what creates those?

Of course, like everywhere else in the Bahamas, the water was crystal clear
(if you discount the clouds of what I was scrubbing off, and a bit of the
ablative bottom paint we had, that I stirred up). However, by standing right
next to the hull, under where I was working, my air bubbles carried off my
debris. I don't know what changed, but this time I got very little water in
my mask, for which I was thankful. When I'm looking up as I do (the opposite
of most diving positions), any water which gets in the mask can run down my
nose. My cure for that is to blow it out the regulator (which is no
problem), but some of it inevitably gets swallowed, and constant salt water
in my mouth has always dried it out. Whatever it was, I didn't have that
much to deal with this time. In any event, by the time I finished, the hull
was clean, and we'd find later that it really helped our speed.

During one of our relatively longer-scoped (a lot of chain out) anchorings,
done when I use two anchors, I'd noticed that the section of chain which
rarely gets used was pretty grunged up with salt. I took the opportunity to
let all but the last couple of feet out in this very calm anchorage, hoping
to have the sand scrape some of it off.

Saturday was Easter evening, with a potluck hors deorvres BYOB get-together
on the beach. As low tide was fully under way, we had to make several passes
at finding the route into the beach where this was occurring, but we got
there in good time. It was so low, and so flat there, that we walked the
dinghy in a few hundred feet, knowing that the tide would rise later. As it
was, when the party broke up, quite a few of the dinghies being fetched had
their owners with wet shorts :{)) Several cruisers we'd met in different
anchorages were there, and we made several new friends as well. It got a bit
buggy toward the end, but we had a good time there none the less. The trip
home allowed us to go close to the park office, previously all exposed rock
and coral, so it was a lot shorter!

Sunday, Easter morning dawned beautifully, as has nearly every day we have
been in the Bahamas. The park put on an Easter Dinner, with boaters bringing
a side dish, with solicitations having gone out beforehand by the park
personnel. We brought a pasta-cheese-broccoli casserole which, if eaten as a
dinner, would easily have fed 5; evidently everyone liked it, as there was
absolutely nothing left in the dish afterwards!. This, and the other side
dishes other cruisers brought accompanied the turkey and ham the park
provided. The park also provided ice for both gatherings, so had we known, I'd
probably have brought a mug for our Cokes, as I like chewing ice nearly as
much as anything else I'd put in my mouth, but, in particular, I really like
icy cold Coke instead of whatever temperature it comes out of the can :{))

One of the special treats we'd wanted to experience was the bananquit birds
on the park office's porch, where we took our bounteous banquet to eat.
These tiny birds have come to expect handouts; indeed, they were a bit of a
nuisance at the serving table, landing to steal a bit from the food, even
with people right there with a spoon or fork! They're tame enough that they'll
eat out of your hand. Indeed, I had one instance where they were fighting
for space - and I've got a big hand! - when I put a few crumbs of carrot
cake in my palm. Others of them perched on my and Lydia's plate's edge while
I was eating. We'd been told we could bring sugar to tempt them, but they
didn't really need that. However, having brought some, we put sugar on the
railing in a trail, and there were dozens of them.

It's a real treat to watch them eat, because they clean each other's beaks
of the crumbs which accumulate. Their tongues, very narrow, and appearing as
they use them sort of like a snake's, but without the fork at the end,
seemed to come out of the roof of their beaks. Fully stuffed, we waddled
back to our dinghy which we had to drag back into deep water, despite our
having anchored it well out from the beach, it being a falling tide after we
got there. We met a few more new folks, and a couple more of cruisers we'd
encountered along the way, on this trip, too. Our boat card file is well
over 150 by now.

When we returned to the boat, we took advantage of having all the chain out
to inspect the chain locker. There was a lot of chipped paint debris in the
bottom, so I vacuumed it out and then poured a pitcher of water down the
limber hole. Those following us from our refit days know that the limber
hole leads to a PVC pipe which, over the 30 or so years that these boats
have been out there, tend to get clogged up. I wound up drilling out, with a
6' drill bit I had left over from some consulting and training I did for the
security alarm industry, a very fully impacted sticks-and-mud clog in there
at the time.

As expected, though, this time it was free, quickly sucking down the couple
of gallons I poured in there after the first test. Once that was done, I
pulled up most of the excess chain, which, due to some currents and a very
little bit of wind, had gotten fairly clean in the time it was down, washing
it thoroughly as I did so. However, one of the projects we have for later
includes making some sort of dodger (which we'll do out of some of the
sailcloth from our remains of the main which was destroyed in the wreck) to
go over the opening for the access doors.

That's so when we're in heavy seas and water splashes into the anchor locker
from the hawse holes (despite their having covers on them) and feed pipe
from the windlass, it won't seep down the holes for the access doors and end
up in the vee berth. Of course, that will require letting both anchor rodes
all the way out. It will probably have to wait until we're either back in
the Bahamas, or, if we stage from there, perhaps in Lake Worth, as where we're
going has a really nasty mud bottom, making for a real chore to wash the
chain as it's restowed.

Because of our expected early departure the following day, we finished up
our internet activities, including phone calls home on the excellent
connection-allowed VoIP Vonage phone setup we have and Lydia reveling in the
renewed data allotment to catch up on her Shutterfly uploads. Due to our
experience early on, I'd been watching the meter closely, and we'd not used
very much on Saturday - but you could literally see it going down this time
:{)) However, as mentioned earlier, with the new start we were given, we
still had close to a day's allotment left, so we didn't feel too badly about
having been given the extra.

Well, I see this is getting long, as usual, so we'll pick up next time with
our departure from Warderick Wells. There's so much to do here that we
really look forward to our next visit, as we really didn't do anything other
than go to the beach for cruisers' meet-and-greets (and, of course, stuff
our faces with Easter dinner, and feed the birds).


Stay tuned :{))

L8R

Skip, working on the boat, as always!


--
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

"Believe me, my young friend, there is *nothing*-absolutely nothing-half so
much worth doing as simply messing, messing-about-in-boats; messing about in
boats-or *with* boats.
In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that's
the charm of it.
Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your
destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get
anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in
particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and
you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not."

Flying Pig wrote:
Warderick Wells Cay, Exumas April 10-13 2009
....

I wonder, when the Flying Pig leaves do they say the Swine Flew?