In Georgetown, Bahamas

We are like the proverbial dog who chased cars, and when he finally
caught one, didn't know quite what to do with it. For years
and years we have known that Georgetown, Great Exuma (Bahamas)
was where we had to go to get home. Once in Georgetown, enjoy
it—but when you leave it, do day-hops to Nassau and an overnight
to Lucaya, and after that an overnight across the Gulf Stream
to Ft Pierce and the United States of freakin' America, a country
Horizons hasn't been in since August 2004, and to which we earnestly
long to go.

So here we are, having overnighted to West Caicos, day-hopped
to Mayaguez (Bahamas), overnighted again to Rum Cay (getting
weathered in there four five days), day-hopped to the north end
of Long Island (the Bahamian one) and then motored easily to
Georgetown, a lovely place to be weathered-in in, and so we are.
The weather will clear in a day or two and we will proceed northward.
After we figure out a few tiny navigational details, child's
play when you get down to it.

Enormous changes from the Dominican Republic: we are no longer
in the tropics (not since Mayaguez), and when the wind is from
the north it is cold! Well, chilly at least—the wool sweater
bought in Glasgow in September 2011 provides seasonable warmth
and comfort in Georgetown in February 2013. English is spoken
and the US greenback dollar is accepted as legal tender for all
debts public and private. (The Alexanders, Andrews, Ulysseses
and Benjamins are much more effective than the Georges, since
prices are rather stiff here.) And our Mattapoisett hailing
port is not exotic, but familiar: more often than daily we hear
from cruisers and land-based tourists that they are from there
or have been there, and so begins a conversation at the dock,
in a saloon, or in some other venue.

This was going to be a shakedown cruise, had to be, since Horizons
had only about two overnights and four day-hops in the past year.
We would have gone further except for the breakdowns—and as
we pushed northward we would be testing our numerous repairs
as well as finding out which disloyal piece of machinery that
we weren't worried about was going to turn on us and fail. As
it has turned out—so far—not so bad. Jack did fix all the instumention
on anchor in Mayaguez after it failed en route there. Fortunately
we were buddy boating with Evergreen 4rest, so had them lead
us in (no depth meter either).

On that trip we discovered that the Active Captain app we bought
for the Ipad has dead on waypoints and can serve as a form of
chartplotter as we hoped. We were able to use a combination of
dead reckoning with fixes for navigation before Jack resuscitated
all the instruments. The back-up GPS has mysteriously vanished,
but will probably be found after we buy a new one in Nassau.
The other repairs were time consuming, but much less traumatic,
and our time on Rum Cay let Jack do them at a dock.

Georgetown has been very pleasant. We elected to tie up at Exuma
Yacht Club to be close to town during the weather that would
be coming in. The yotties here are full of energy and activity
and plan many activities. There is a net every morning that lists
the news of arrivals, departures and plans that goes on for about
45 minutes with no idle chatter. Unfortunately the activities
take place over on Stocking Island, a one mile dinghy ride across
the harbor, where the winds have been strong from the NW, N and
NE at around 25-30K. We have been securely tied and not worried,
but we have had no desire for a dinghy ride or water taxi.

There is every indication that the bad weather will become fine
tomorrow and Thursday we will leave for what we hope will be
a pleasure cruise up the bank side of the Exumas to Nassau.
Presumably our shake-down cruise has shook and we are good to
go.