With no internet available since we left Bimini, updates have been sparse! We’re at Staniel Cay, having arrived Friday from Hawksbill Cay– We’re just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, and spent some time at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club for an obligatory green beer. As luck would have it, the date is also the annual 007 Bond event at the Club. Since the Bond movie Thunderball was filmed here in the Grotto in 1963, the area has held on to that claim to fame for the time since, and each year the Yacht Club (which is more a resort/restaurant/bar/marina than actual yacht club) holds a Bond 007 party commemorating Staniel Cay’s place in moviemaking history! There are gaming tables set up with contests for the best Bond and female counterpart costumes, music, drink and lots of guests, it’s a fun time for partiers. We stopped in for an hour or two, but our preferences for an evening’s activities lean more towards a quiet night at anchor under the stars! We’ll probably stay at Staniel another day to catch up on some bill paying, email, the blog, and work into the schedule a routine service of oil & filter change for the generator.
Our generator is our prime power source; while in cruising mode, we run the genset on the average 3-1/2 hours a day. That run time charges our house battery bank, makes enough water for the load of wash we run plus the normal water use for the day. The rest of the day we’re quiet, with our batteries providing power for all on-board demands, both 110VAC via our inverter, and 12VDC direct from the batteries. So the genset receives regular scheduled service to keep it in top operating condition.
From Staniel, we’ll head south toward Georgetown. The weather outlook isn’t particularly good, we’ve had lots of wind and more rain than we’ve had in previous visits, with a squall nearly every morning, just enough to wet the decks. One upside to travel in the Bahamas is that the boat’s topsides stay relatively clean, no airborne soot to create those wonderful black streaks that don’t wash off! The saltwater and salt air is a different story, windows just don’t stay clean very long! But a quick wash off and squeegee makes them passable in short order!