Category: Captain’s Log

Captain’s Log – Sat 3/29/25

Life here at The Grand Bahama Yacht Club is very easy going. The place is gorgeous, the people are so nice, there are many local restaurants to choose from and there is even a pet pig named Bacon. We almost don’t want to leave. We will definitely be back.

This is Bacon, wagging his tail like a puppy. He wouldn’t be so friendly if he knew exactly how much I love bacon!

There were a few boat chores to take care of. I had to defrost the fridge. If anyone knows how to keep a non-frost free style fridge/freezer from frosting over, let me know! I put the dinghy back up for travel, and thoroughly checked the engine over. The water tank was switched to the forward RO water tank as the water maker is due for it’s auto flush cycle Sunday morning. We can’t flush with city water that has chlorine in it. Not sure if it does here but better safe than sorry.

We spent the afternoon touring the Bahamas Maritime Museum. Interesting history of the original Lucayan people, the timeline through history from Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, the pirates and the effects of slavery and the American Revolution on the islands. Much of this not the world’s finest moment.

The waters here are rich with treasure from many wrecks of Spanish Galleons and pirates. There are silver bars over a foot long! Must add under-water metal detector to my dive gear!!!

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Captain’s Log – Fri 3/28/25

We set sail from St Pete Beach one month ago today, sailing down the west coast of Florida, through the Keys, across the Atlantic gulf stream to Bimini and then to Lucaya, near Freeport, where we are currently docked.

To mark the occasion, we celebrated with dinner at the Bell Channel Inn, a cute little pink hotel in port Lucaya with a table overlooking the harbor. In a decidedly island simplicity, the wine list here consists of two options; red or white.

Since there’s only two days left in lobster season and I haven’t yet had the chance to get my own, I opted for the local surf and turf. The lobster dwarfed the 10oz steak! Looks like it’s steak tacos for lunch tomorrow!😆

This morning we evaluated the latest weather forecasts and have made a tentative plan to depart Lucaya early Monday morning, sailing NW around West End and then east again to a little island called Mangrove Cay for the night. Then on Tuesday we’ll sail to Great Sale Cay where we will anchor and wait out the weather for a few days before pushing east into the Abaco Islands.

In preparation, we made a run to the grocery store. The Grand Bahama Yacht Club has a free shuttle to the store. Surprisingly, it was much the same as our local Winn Dixie. We found everything we were looking for except canned beer. We just don’t like having glass on the boat.

And in other news, I heard through the grapevine that the company I was working for did a big round of layoffs. Looks like I picked a good time to leave on my own terms.

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Captain’s Log – Thu 3/27/25

Today marks one month since I retired. What an incredible journey so far!

Our primary navigation system is back online. I installed the GPS that I bought at West Marine Monday at the helm to replace the failed unit. This unit has sonar, which is a bit of an upgrade. That was the only model in stock and sonar may come in handy at some point. I then installed the replacement unit that Garmin overnighted at the nav station in the cabin as a back up. It’s fully functional there, networked to the helm unit. Remove the two crews from the bracket, unplug three cables and it can be moved to the helm in about 10 minutes if needed. The setup for the second unit was painless. It immediately connected to the primary unit and was good to go. I updated the firmware on both to the latest version. I still think there might be a bug in this latest version so I’ll avoid doing the tide station search which is what I was doing when the last one suddenly froze up and died. I can look tides up on my phone for now.

With that, it was time to celebrate the successful project at a local tiki bar called Rum Runners. $5 nachos and $1 wings for happy hour.

This place also has the tradition of signing dollar bills and hanging them. We hung one for Hula Girl behind the bar by the wine glasses, where hopefully it won’t blow away.

Alicia and Steve

sv/Hula Girl

#retired2025

Oh and they have these classic phone booths here! Too funny! Well it was after we left happy hour!

Tomorrow we’ll top off the fuel, water and make a provision run so we’re ready to go when the weather cooperates. Hopefully have time for a tour of the brewery.

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