Journey of Amazing Grace II

Treasure Cay is my children’s favorite place in the Abacos. We are back in the
harbor. Treasure has a fantastic beach, swimming pool, hot showers and a decent
grocery store. For $10.00 a day you get all of that and Internet. So we are
staying a few days. This will give me a chance to get our blog up to date and
lots of time to play on the beach.

This is what the harbor looks like from the deck of our boat.

Hope town has a spectacular red and white stipe light house. We anchored off and took
the dingy in. It is a beautiful place.

The LIght Hosue in Hope Town

People always ask about our “adventures” with our sailboat. We
came on Amazing Grace II with the intent of avoiding adventure. We
are careful with the weather. We generally don’t go out when it
is bad. With lots of preparation and care, most of the time we have
had fun and avoided adventure.

Two days ago we had an adventure. I was returning in the dingy,
after dropping Chantelle off at a neighboring boat, when either I
hit something in the water or one of the motor mounts on the outboard
broke. There was a big jerk. Then there was a moment when I looked
back behind the dingy and watched as the dingy was towing the motor,
in the water, by it’s gas hose. The hose separated. The outboard
went to the bottom. I was left adrift. Fortunately I was mostly
uninjured. I had a scratch on my leg that didn’t even hurt – but
it was bleeding. I was adrift. I started to put on an oar and
then realized that I have 2 anchors in the dingy – so I put one
out. That stopped the drifting. Having some hope of recovering
the outboard I did not just row back to the boat. I was a little
upset. Being in the Bahamas without a dingy that works would not be fun.
I thought about just up-anchoring and heading back to the USA. I
considered how expensive it would be to purchasing a small outboard
in the Bahamas.

I rigged the small hook anchor and started to look for something
that would float – so that I could mark the spot where the motor
went down. I picked up the life jackets in the dingy and searched
to see if we had left a watter bottle or anything that would float.
Finally I yelled at my wife in Amazing Grace II to come on deck.
I was only about 150 or 200 feet away from the boat. She came on
deck and I told her that I needed something that would float. At
that moment I realized that I was holding a life jacket. I was having
a true blond moment. Instead
of having somebody swim over a watter bottle, I tied the life jacket
on my second anchor and put it out as a marker.

My wife called out to our friends on Cupcake and Jonathan and Simon
came over to help me. They towed me and our dingy back to Amazing
Grace II and we grabbed some rope, a block and tackle and a couple
of large fenders. They snorkeled down to the motor, tied the fenders
on to the motor and lifted it off of the bottom. Another boater
showed up in his dingy and towed all of us and the motor back to
Amazing Grace II. We then used the davit lift to pull the motor out
of the water.

After the motor had drained for a while we brought it into the
cockpit where I have a board that I can mount and do outboard work.
I took the cover off and gave it a fresh water bath. Then I pulled
the spark plugs and drained it. Ouch. More fresh water. I removed
the carburator. With the plugs out and the carburator off it would
turn over. That was a good sign. Lots and Lots and Lots of
WD-40 and washing and cleaning and draining and whipping!

Then I cleaned out the fuel hoses, the fuel filer and disassembled the
carburator and carefully cleaned all of it. The carburator and fuel
pump got a rinse and then a wash down in acetone and a coat of WD-40.
All the parts went back together.

I cleaned the spark plugs and re-gapped them. Finally the moment came.
I repaired the broken fuel hose and hoked it all up. I pumped gas into
the motor with the squeeze bulb and it started better than ever.

Chris from Alchemy came over and helped me figure out how to bolt the
outboard on the transom of our dingy. He also had a portable electric
drill motor and the correct bolt to use.

Hopefully I did enough cleaning and lubricating on the motor to keep
it working. At the moment it is bolted back onto the stern of our
dingy and seems to be running just fine.

I am truly appreciative of the help that Johathan and Simon from Cupcake
provided in raising the motor and the parts and tools that Chris from
Alchemy provide so that I could bolt the outboard back onto our dingy.

Having fun swimming off of the transom

And running around in the dingy

Chantelle anchoring

Corwin and Chantelle’s 13th birthday!

Yea!

They are awsome!

Amazing Grace II our beautiful Beneteau 50 at Anchor in Rock Sound, Eluthra Island, Bahamas.

Eleuthera At Rock Sound, we visited a very interesting cave. It
reminded us of Carls Bad Cavern, NM.

for a full size ersion of this picure, 2.4 MiB JPEG – if you want a 114 MiB TIFF please contact us.

After Rock Sound we went to
Ten Bay. It was so lovely that we spent four days here. It was
wonderful to swim off of the back of the boat and walk the beach.
We also had a beach fire here.

We are in Marsh Harbor in the Abacos riding out a storm. Our weather
router, Chris Parker, recommended that we move this far north to miss
most of the bad weather. He was spot-on. We have only seen one
squall to 25 and some rain. Farther south in Eluthra they are getting
heavy rain and squalls to 35 or more. We are protected with good
holding and having a pleasant if uneventful stay.

Marsh harbor is a city. It is not a remote, beautiful anchorage like
so many that we have had this winter. It is a good stopping off place
to get supplies and fix things. The real attraction for us at the
moment is that it provides protection and good holding. My count
yesterday had 35 boats anchored in it. Kind of crowded!

We went into the bakery and got treats and stopped at one of the
largest grocery stores in the Bahamas and purchased some lettuce
and other fresh veggies.

The rain is hard enough that we are filling our water tanks with
rain water. Other than that all that we have to do is read a book,
listen to an audio book and play games until the rain and wind
stop.

Yesterday we build a rain cover for one of our hatches so that we
can get additional air flow through the boat and not get rain
inside. We built it out of some tape, a plastic bag and two
lengths of rope. It works!

I don’t think that I have ever seen this humid a day. It is 75
degrees and 99% humidity. We have condensation on some of the
inside hatches at 75 degrees! It is really soggy!

Sasha says, “This has been the mos uneventful storm ever.” — Thanks
Chris Parker!