Category: Captain’s Log

Captain’s Log – Sat 4/5/25

We didn’t end up going to Spanish Cay today after all. We’re in a beautiful, protected anchorage so it seemed like the perfect place to break out the snuba gear to try it out and clean the boat’s bottom as it was due. The marinas here seem to have a lot of sharks, I guess everyone cleans the fish and throws the parts in chumming the water. Figured best to clean the boat’s hull somewhere else!

Snuba is a dive system where you have a long hose attached to an air compressor instead of using dive tanks. For us, this is more practical for diving since we don’t really have room for scuba tanks and the sizable air compressor required to refill them. This is battery powered which we can recharge from our solar. We have a pair of these Blu3 Nomad dive systems, with spare batteries for both. We learned to scuba dive last year and wanted to have that option available to us on this trip, so this system was the perfect compromise. We are limited to 30’ with it but most reefs here are pretty shallow. The whole thing fits in a backpack so it doesn’t take up much space.

This was the first time I’ve used it, so there was a bit of a learning curve. It requires a bit of assembly and has a harness that needs adjusting. It took a bit to get the weight belt adjusted for neutral buoyancy, the point where you neither sink or rise. The water was a bit chilly so I wore a 2mm short wetsuit, which made me a bit extra buoyant. It’s definitely a little harder to breathe than with a tank, however it was fine once I got use to it. After about 10 minutes of practice with it, I felt comfortable enough to dive with it.

I grabbed my deck brush, a scraper and a screw driver then went about cleaning the algae slime and barnacles off the keel. I made sure the propeller was clean and unfolds properly. I also made sure the water intake for the engine was clear. Cleaning the hull is a bit of a workout but the dive was kind of fun.

After a well earned lunch, we had a few other things to take care of. I put the spare fuel into the main tank. We’ve used about 12 gallons since departing Bimini. Then I fired up the engine so we could make water and generate some power to charge the batteries.

Finally we needed to find a place to hunker down next week. There is a big cold front coming through that will have squalls with it for most of next week. Green Turtle had one dock available but only through Wednesday. Fingers crossed there is a cancellation and we don’t have to leave and find somewhere else to go in stormy weather. 😬🤞

We’ll have to go to Spanish Cay some other time. We need to move Southeast tomorrow towards Green Turtle.

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Captain’s Log – Fri 4/4/25

We motored about an hour and half SE into the wind (again) to another island. Crab Cay is just North of Little Abaco. We tucked into a gorgeous bay that is very sheltered from the SE breeze that has been blowing for a couple of days. We needed to make water again, so we did that while the engine was running.

We anchored off a grove of coconut trees in water that covered the full spectrum of shades from teal to brilliant blue.

There is a cut that has some current so we waited for slack tide then took the dinghy over to snorkel the rocks there. Wasn’t much to see there so we explored the bay closer to shore and found a small coral section by the coconut tree grove. Snorkeling there we found some small coral, sponges and conch. Not many fish, and not all that colorful but it was nice to be in the water. We also saw some medium sized turtles. I finally found where I stowed the GoPro camera, but not in time for today’s excursion.

With Radio Margaritaville playing while we watched the sunset, I attempted to make pizza on the grill, but the result was more burnt toast than fire roasted. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Tomorrow we will head to Spanish Cay Resort and Marina for the evening and have a date night. We can get fuel, good showers and a nice meal there. Also will be good to plug in to shore power and top off our battery bank. We’ve been running a bit of a power deficit with the addition of the freezer, starlink and recently the second GPS. We’re consuming about 4.8kw a day but the solar is just generating 3kw. We have to run the engine a bit to make up the deficit. In the future, we need to add about another 200 watts of solar panels to break even.

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Captain’s Log – Thu 4/3/25

Today’s adventure was a dinghy ride (after changing the fuel filter so it would start) to shore at Allen’s Cay, then hiking the trail to the “sign” tree. Over the years sailors have marked a trail with debris washed up from storms or just things they have. The trail comes out on the Atlantic side of the island where numerous trees are decorated with mementoes from the boats that have anchored here.

We left Hula Doll tied up to a shade tree while set out on the quest to find the sign tree.

The entrance is Marked by a Walmart parking sign.

Stepping through the giant hula hoop, leads you down a whimsical path. This is the home of hundreds of blown out flip flops and random items that mark the path.

There were various obstacles along the way such as the limbo pole and planks to walk.

Eventually we found the sign tree. We looked high and low for boats we might know, but didn’t see any.

We added a new sign for Hula Girl, pointing towards St Pete. I lashed it on pretty good, hopefully will stand up to the weather so we can revisit in the future.

Can you find Hula Girl’s sign?

Afterwards, we had a picnic lunch overlooking the Atlantic.

Back at Hula Girl, I had to deal with more technology issues. The IPad I’ve been using for backup navigation and the anchor alarm list its GPS signal, making it useless for navigation. It’s been working fine for the last month. It uses a Bluetooth external GPS, which is supplied from the Garmin InReach. Spent an hour with tech support but no luck. It’s definitely an IPad issue, but not sure how to fix it.

Gave up, had a beer and made grilled chicken sandwich’s for dinner. Tomorrow we’ll go check out another island.

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