Getting Ready and the Hero of the day

One to get ready

Two to get ready

Three to get ready

Four to get ready

Five to get ready

what do you do with black water?

Etc….

Yesterday we divided and conquered.  Ben had his list of last minute stuff. Dad and I went to his boat and pulled somethings off like… an anchor for the dinghy, a poop pump… I know you are probable sick of all this potty talk but it is good awareness for you all to know how we take for granted simple things in life. 

When we had our meeting with Skip I asked what about Black-Water. (Black water is poopy water) Now that you know the lingo I can just refer it as black-water.  He simply said, “Just pump out when you are in the ocean, get ride of your holding tank while out 5 miles or more.”  Hummm one problem… We don’t have the pump on our tank for that.  We are used to USA sailing where each port has a black-water pump station and some places come to you! (those are my favorite – curbside service) So we have not needed that.

We got out the marina book and tried to look up pump-outs and the 2001 bahamas book. they had no  pump outs! Not even a column.  He had the 2007 bahamas book of marinas and there was a column with pump out but they mostly did not have them.  We hope in 2011 we will find some BUT just in case and …six to get ready… my dad had a hand pump.  We hope it works!!!

At his boat we also got a big scoop for the front hatch (I’ll explain that when we use it cuz it will be exciting!) all fishing gear so dad can show us how to fish. Etc…

Ben got a wifi amplifier.  So when we find wifi it will hopefully make it to our boat.  We’ll see… he also got cheap beer to do some trading with people from the south islands.  He got more sea sick stuff to try since we will have many guests we thought we should have many options.

While at dads we of course we wanted to chat with all the locals.  We met them for happy hour and they were all happy.  Fran brought a conversational knickknack (a cute thermometer hard to explain –  the concept was from the olds day of Galileo) We laughed and laughed.  All were happy! No one left behind on that chuckling session.  Ya gotta love canandians eh? Then there is Joe and Fran – not from Canada but from MD.  You’ve heard me talk about them…

Fran always has a smile and willing to provide coffee in the morning for our routine and kind words. Joe is dad’s buddy like Phil was in the old days. We all love Joe too especially since he is our hero for the day!  He is driving with us to the boat and then he will be driving dad’s car back to fort myers. We could not have done this without him.  Car juggling is part of sailing.  We love all those that have transported us around!!

cheers and blessings to our hero Joe!