Paperbird was put back in the water yesterday morning and everything worked great during the sea trial!! We are so thankful! The damper plate that sheared had to be replaced but the transmission is ok. We went back and anchored in Mill Creek and got up at dawn today heading south. Exactly one week later to the day.
Thank you Phil and Kathy Dalby and Jill and Butler Newman!! You have been a huge blessing to us and we treasure your friendship!
He quieted the sea with His power
We have a good friend who talks about the “God Sightings” her family sees as they go through different things in life. That’s what we are doing today. Seeing God’s mercies at every twist and turn. In the events we go through and the people he puts in our lives.
We left Galesville on saturday afternoon heading south on the Chesapeake. It was an incredibly beautiful day with 10 kts of wind. We sailed 20 miles down to Herringing Bay and anchored for the night. I didn’t get a sunset picture but instead this amazing full moon picture as another boat was coming into the anchorage to join us for the night.
The next day was even better even if we did have to sail close to the wind. We had 12 to 20 kts of wind and sailed 40 miles down to Solomon’s MD. The sun was bright and sparkling on the water and we were sailing at 6 – 7 kts!! We anchored in Mill Creek away from the noise and lights of Solomons Island. I made a pot of Brunswick Stew for dinner while Greg calibrated the wind instruments, George (our auto pilot) and topped off the batteries. We sat in the cockpit at sunset and enjoyed stew and our surroundings. I didn’t even bother getting up for the camera as the sun was setting….figured there were many more nights to come for sunset pictures. And there will be!
The next morning we got underway at 6:45 because we had 45 miles to go and the wind was going to be very light. We were motoring out of the mouth of the river at 7 AM as the sun was rising on another gorgeous day on the Chesapeake! AND THEN we suddenly started losing speed. The engine was still running just fine but no speed. We raised the sails and I tacked back and forth heading back into the river as Greg went below to figure out what was wrong. He checked the fluid levels, manually shifted the transmission into forward and reverse and checked all the linkages but no go. Nothing. The transmission had quit working. We looked at each other and just sighed….then called Tow Boat and then Zahnisers Marina in Solomon’s and arranged for a mechanic to look at it when the tow boat got us to the dock. We had to be taken out of the water because when the transmission is taken out the prop shaft is no longer supported and it leaves a big opening for water to “flow” in! So we are safely on the hard in Solomon’s Island, our transmission will be taken out today and sent to NJ to be repaired. We were told it could take a couple weeks.
We were rather frustrated with how the day went, but we sat, in our gracious friends basement apartment, this morning with our coffee and started talking about all the ways God has provided for us. First and foremost that we were safe. We were not in the middle of nowhere (and we HAVE been there before!) but instead close to a town where we had a tow boat captain with 25 years of towing experience (knowledgable and friendly!) and a good marina with a good reputation for repairs and a lift to keep the boat safe during the repairs to special friends that drove to Solomon’s to pick us up and take us back up to Galesville to get our car to knowing we could just show up at our friends apartment and stay for as long as we needed.
Day 1…Getting underway from Galesville MD.
Huge full moon rising over the anchorage.
Day 2…..great day of sailing!
Watermen working.
Beautiful Cove Point Lighthouse.
Captain Mike towing us.
Paperbird in the lift well.
Paperbird safely on land for her repairs.
We are very thankful for how God provides for us even when we aren’t aware until after the fact! And now we wait….
He quieted the sea with His power
A mixture of work and play…..that’s what our sumer has been! We spent time with kids, grandkids and friends. We got projects done on the boat that will make life better this winter and helped friends with home projects that will make life better for them. We baby sat for grands and house/dog sat for friends. We cheered at baseball games and football games. We spent a wonderful weekend in NY city with good friends walking the city and seeing a broadway play. We are just about done with our provisioning as the weather starts to cool off from the summer heat. We had an amazing summer and are ready to head south!
Grands…..they are the BEST! Becca and Ryan.
Everybody loves a dinghy ride!!
Gramps and Zach.
Everybody loves the pool too.
Walking Frederick MD with Jill and Butler. Fun and relaxing.
Spending time with Sue.
House and dog sitting.
Remarking the anchor chain. Always a fun job!!
We installed a water maker!!
Fun evening with fellow boaters Tony and Ann.
Our grandson Ben at the helm….at 3 years old!!
More fun in the dinghy!
Our grandson, Noah, driving the dinghy!!
I LOVE this silly boy!!
He had his turn driving the dinghy too.
Noah had his turn at the helm.
Lots of solar added to the top of our canvas!
Orioles baseball!! Fun time with friends.
Home improvements with Jill and Butler!!
Yay!! The newly relocated drain for the kitchen sink worked perfect!!
New house batteries!! That, with the new solar panels, should make life better!
Navy football game with friends!
Always a great show at the Navy football games.
He nailed his landing.
Noah seeing what he can see.
Lunch aboard Paperbird.
Playing aboard Paperbird.
Noah had so much fun driving!!
Reading to Grands.
Went to a Hartge display of their boat building in Galesville.
Learned a lot of the Hartge history of boats.
Fun playing legos with Grands.
We had an amazing weekend in NY with Jill and Butler.
Special friends….Jill and Butler.
We walked the High Line through NY city. It’s an old rail road track that is several miles long that has been converted to a walkway It is up high so you get amazing views of the city.
Then continued through the streets of NY city.
And walked along the water front down to the 911 memorial.
The World Trade Center memorials
Names engraved along the edge of a huge fountain. It was a very moving place to visit.
This is the inside of the wing looking structure in the previous picture. It is a huge mall.
World Trade Center Memorial.
Then we walked down and looked at the Statue of Liberty. We went to a wonderful Italian place for dinner and then a broadway play. Like I said…an amazing weekend!
We found a place in Annapolis that sells small pieces of teak and Greg was finally able to fix the cap rail that has been broken since we bought the boat.
The new cap rail looks great! Now for it to “gray” to match the rest.
We attended the Annapolis GAM and had a great time catching up with old and new friends!
We had an ordination service for Brian March the new senior pastor at our home church, Broadneck EP, in Annapolis MD. It was a special evening for our church. His family is a blessing to our church!
Spent a day walking around the sail boat show in Annapolis and picked up a few small things…..one was a new baseball hat for Greg with Paperbird on it!!
More time with Noah and Ben playing in the back yard on a gorgeous fall day!
So much fun with these two guys!
Always checking for books at the marina trading library.
He quieted the sea with His power
We are in Galesville MD for the summer. It is a delightful little town on the West River. We walked out to Main Street on the 4th of July and watched the independence day parade and thoroughly enjoyed it. The rain held off long enough for all the fire trucks, floats, cars, bikes and horses to slowly make their way past all the excited kids that knew to bring a bag to collect the candy that would be tossed to them. It was fun and patriotic!!
He quieted the sea with His power!
We left the Bahamas with a fun dolphin escort and we flew north to St Augustine riding the fastest part of the Gulf Stream hitting 11 1/2 to 12 1/2 kts! We usually sail at 6 1/2 to 7 kts and the Gulf Stream flows north at 4 to 4 1/2 kts at the center. That’s the fastest ride we’ve ever had in our boat!!
Last sunset to blow the conch horn in the Bahamas.
Dolphin on the bow as we leave the Bahamas.
We caught two barracuda while still on the Bahama banks. Barracuda aren’t good to eat and they tend to bite through the lines, so we reeled in the lines to wait for deep water the next day.
Reeling in the first fish!!
The first of 2 barracuda that we put back.
Sunset heading toward the US.
The next day we caught two black fin tuna!! They were SO delicious!
Lots of yummy fish in our fridge.
We had some GOOD fish tacos!! And still have tuna in our freezer!!
Beautiful St Augustine.
St Augustine lighthouse.
Summer flowers everywhere.
Horse drawn carriage in a city filled with history.
An archeological dig site where artifacts were found in the historic part of town.
El Galleon. A Spanish ship.
Greg getting ready to check and clean the prop.
Sunset
A queen that’s seen better days.
Shrimp boat at the dock.
Sunrise
Lots of huge Pelicans.
A tank with turtles
And some huge gold fish.
Shrimpers off shore at work.
We picked up a hitchhiker when we were 20 miles off shore. This little bird was soaking wet when it first came into our cockpit. He flitted around the boat from the bow to the stern for half the day before he finally took off for land.
Our little hitchhiker.
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We watched a shark fin moving toward our boat when we were off shore too. Just as it passed our boat it jumped and we could see that it was a hammerhead shark! Wow! That was cool to see!!
Click on the picture to make it bigger to see the hammerhead.
Sunrise after our first night off shore.
Sunrise after our second night off shore. Heading into the Cape Fear River.
When we anchored at Wrightsville Beach NC there were lots of people and stand up paddle (SUP) boards in town. We found out that it was the weekend of the annual Carolina Cup, the big annual SUP race. Then we remembered that we were in Wrightsville Beach last year on the exact same weekend! We enjoyed watching hundreds of SUPs go past our boat.
Lots of people watching the SUP race from the bridge.
SUP racers going past our boat. Note how they all line up and “draft” each other just like bicycles.
We had a great visit with Bill and Mary Lou!!
After we left Wrightsville Beach, we sailed to Cape Lookout Bight just outside the Morehead City inlet along the shore of NC. It is so beautiful! You can only get there by boat so not much of a crowd. We spent our time there watching huge turtles, walking the beach, watching sea birds, touring the grounds of the Cape Lookout lighthouse and riding in the dinghy along the shore to look at the wild ponies. BUT, the most amazing experience was having a humpback whale surface right next to our boat. It was as big as our boat! We never had the camera out so no pictures but we saw it surface multiple times a day for several days! Everybody in the anchorage was excited about seeing it.
Huge turtles out in Look Out Bight
Cape lookout lighthouse
Lighthouse keepers quarters
Lyn with lighthouse.
Looking from inside the keepers house out through the front door.
Wild horses at Lookout bight.
More wild horses
Horseshoe crab.
Oyster Catcher
Shrimp boat coming in from a day on the water.
Predawn light as we leave Cape Lookout Bight headed inland to the Intracoastal Waterway and Oriental, NC.
He quieted the sea with his power
Sailing from Eleuthera to the Abacos.
Don Wood is an artist in Marsh Harbor and has an interesting place to look around. His original jewelry is beautiful!
Concert at ECC school mostly done by volunteers.
ECC a school for developmentally challenged kids.
World’s shortest St Patrick’s Day parade. 300 steps long!! Met up with Joe and Yvonne from Modaki.
Heading to Nippers on Great Guana.
Bare Foot Man concert. Good music, bad lyrics. We didn’t stay long.
The real reason to go to Nippers!!
Wandering Great Guana with Phil and Kathy.
Treasure Cay beach…what can I say? Beautiful!!!
Flo’s world famous cinnamon rolls!!! As great as we remembered from last year!!
Found an actual ice cream shop on Man-O-War Cay. Catching it open was tricky!! Island time!!
Watching boat builders work on an Albury 23.
The Albury 23 comes from above mold.
Chatting with Willard Albury as he rebuilds a wooden boat he originally built some years ago.
Andy Albury is a model builder of the boats his dad built.
The William H Albury. Built 1963. Is being restored by David Wright.
Having a look around the restoration of the William H ALbury.
Elaine and Rudy from Man-O-War and are care takers for a large piece of property owned by people from the US. They have been the care takers for this family for 50 years! We met them last year and looked for them this year to say hello.
David Wright restoring the Tribute. It is beautiful!!
Abaco dinghy sailing through the anchorage.
Elbow Cay Lighthouse in Hope Town.
View from the window near the top of the lighthouse where Paperbird and Unicorn are anchored together.
Inside the lighthouse.
A stone oven from an earlier time period.
Junior dinghy races are over.
Enjoying a great view!!
Linda, we thought of you when we saw the pink house in Hope Town.
Church in Hope Town where we attended Easter Service.
Becca, Eliana, Zach, Ryan, Noah and Ben this is a picture of the sun shining through bubbles on the top of the water. It looked like stars on the sandy bottom.
A coconut palm tree.
Tahiti beach.
Greg jumped in to clean the bottom of the boat and found these two remora helping out on the bottom of the keel. They were working their way from one end to the other. We did look around for a shark since that’s who they usually hang around with. Notice how little water is under the keel! This is normal for the Bahamas.
Busy remoras.
Greg cleaning the water line.
Lunch after riding bikes to the end of Elbow Cay and back.
David zipping thru the anchorage in his Abaco dinghy.
Spent an afternoon with Modaki (Joe and Yvonne) and Unicorn (Phil and Kathy)
Who can find Gramps??? Maybe he’s been in the water too long!!!
Lyn feeding oatmeal to the fish.
Reef life.
Mermaid Reef
Pretty blue parrot fish.
Well, maybe her name isn’t Rapunzel but Gayle grew up in a castle and still lives there. We read a book called “The Out Island Doctor” about Evans Cottman. He was a retired science teacher who came to the Bahamas in the 1940’s. He was able, because of his science back ground to become a Dr without going to medical school. He sailed his boat the Green Cross throughout the islands ministering to the sick. He married a local woman from Abaco named Viola Sawyer and they had a daughter named Gayle. They built a house that looks like a castle that they moved into when Gayle was 12 years old. We were privileged to meet Gayle and see the castle up close. She was very gracious and we enjoyed hearing her stories about her dad and life in the yellow castle on the top of the hill.
Her view from the back porch.
Her dad built it like a castle because he had seen a house like this when he was young and had really liked it so decided to build his family one in the same style.
From the front yard.
Modaki (Joe and Yvonne) going past us.
Sunset
Another sunset, because you can never have too many sunset pictures!!
He quieted the sea with his power
After Hatchet bay, we sailed up to Spanish Wells for a very different taste of Eleuthera. Spanish Wells is a fairly crowded town on a small island at the very north end of Eleuthera. Filled with colorful houses and lots of stores, shops and more golf carts than we’ve seen in one place before!
The anchoring in Spanish Wells in pretty much non-existent, with 1 marina and a handful of mooring balls that have been failing recently. So we opted to anchor outside the harbor at Meeks Patch, a very wet and wild 2 mile dinghy ride that tested our waterproof bags. But it was a great stop and well worth the soaking.
Unfortunately, it was also a short visit as a good weather window opened up for the sail up to the Abacos. Weather rules!
Fishing boat with the small collecting boats following.
Spanish Wells water front.
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All age school.
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More golf carts than cars in grocery store parking lot.
Our kind of Ave!!!
Yes, there is water out there….it was low tide and a shallow beach!!
Low tide at the water front.
Ran into Right of Passage….met them in Bimini.
Never pass up a hardware store!!
Pulling dinghy’s around to a lower level because of low tide.
Mail boat and ferry in at same time.
He quieted the sea with his power
Hatchet Bay is the site of a failed livestock operation planned for Eleuthera. Someone built all the silos around what would eventually become pastures and then blasted a narrow opening into a very well protected ocean pond. Unfortunately, the livestock operation failed and the small settlement is pretty depressed. We did find a great church and joined them for worship.
We took the bikes ashore several days to do some riding and sightseeing. One of the amazing highlights was the Glass Window Bridge. There used to be a natural bridge over the narrowest part of the island where the deep Atlantic waters to the east connect to the shallow sound waters to the west, but a hurricane destroyed the arch. Then a large concrete span bridge was built to replace it, but a rogue wave hit it in the early 90’s and shifted the entire bridge about 7 feet! The road approaches were adjusted a bit, the bridge shored up some and life goes on. Resilience!
Safest Harbour…because of narrow cut to go in.
Going into Hatchet Bay thru a VERY narrow cut!!!
Dinghy dock
School for all ages.
School crest
Milk crate on the side of a tree for basket ball goal.
Cruisers pot luck…..fun time meeting others anchored here.
Church we attended on Sunday.
Monday did a very hilly 20 mile bike ride to glass window.
Going thru Gregory Town
Hiked to surfers beach.
Fish museum….full of pictures of fish that have been caught.
Glass window Bridge
On the west side (on the banks) it was very calm.
On the east side (the ocean side) it was VERY rough!!! This picture shows the 7 feet the wave pushed the bridge. It is a one lane bridge now.
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Lunch at Unca Gene’s back at Gregory Town.
Yay….lunch time. This is a really hilly island.
Next day lunch at Twin Brothers
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As seen on CBS on Top Chef!! How about that Keith?!?!
Road side fruits and vegetables.
Last day, lunch at Rainbow Inn.
Rainbow Inn overlooking the water.
Watching dolphin swim next to us.
He quieted the sea with his power
After Rock Sound, we moved up the coast a bit to Governors Harbour, the original capital of the Bahamas. The anchorage in Governors Harbor isn’t quite as secure as other places, so we didn’t stay long. But we did find a beautiful pink sand beach on the other side of the island. Fortunately we were there on a Friday night, which means we were able to enjoy the weekly Friday Night Fish Fry. The whole town turns out for music and dancing in the streets, and several booths cooking everything from fish to chicken, to conch with all the usual sides. Quite the experience. It was a little strange since there is a healthy non-cruising tourist population in Governors Harbour, the first place so far we’ve really seen many people other than locals or cruisers.
Dinghy landing….tide is out….
View of the harbor
Library
Stone church and cemetery
Timothy Gibson house
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School
These guys are here every afternoon selling their catch. That is a Huge grouper.
Huge lobster!
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Hardware store…always looking for something!!
We walked over the hill to the pink sand beach
See the pink?!?!
It was a beautiful beach!!
Friday night fish fry
HUGE frying pan for frying fish
Limbo
And a Junkanoo!
We enjoyed fritters, BBQ chicken and bahamian mac and cheese.
He quieted the sea with His power
Rock Sound was our first introduction to Eleuthera, and what a great introduction it was! A quaint little settlement with a couple of unique features. The first is a deep blue hole right in the middle of town. It’s reported to be over 600’ deep, although the locals say it’s bottomless. They also said it’s the place where all the local kids learned to swim. Supposedly Jaques Cousteau dove in the hole to try to find the outlet to the ocean, but no such luck.
The other memorable feature is a restaurant across the island called Northside Restaurant. It’s operated by Rosie who picks you up (or in our case, asks a friend to pick us up), feeds you and then gives you a lift back across the island to the dinghy dock. Of course, it’s not a normal restaurant in some respects. Mostly – no menu. Rosie describes what food she has in stock and then she goes to the kitchen and cooks what you decide on. In our case, bbq chicken, cole slaw, mac & cheese, and peas & rice. While she cooks, you can wander the beach, admire the unique décor and just hang out with others. We also discovered Sammy’s place, a small café with great food and reasonably fast wifi. While we did laundry we were able to enjoy lunch and catching up on blogs at Sammy’s. It’s a great place to relax.
Entering Rock Sound Harbor
Sunset in Rock Sound
Going to Ocean Hole
600 feet down there it opens to let ocean water in to this inland hole.
Fish live in it too.
Souvenirs at the Ocean hole
Our ride out to Rosies
Rosie and her dog heading into her restaurant.
All the decorations she found on the beach
Rosies in Rock Sound
Rosie serving other guest
After ordering our food we wondered down to the beach
Rosies back yard….I know, I know….we are jealous too!!
More decorations….painted coconut
Conch shell flower vase
She is a Grandma too!!
Our Bahamian dinner….BBQ chicken, bahamian mac and cheese, potato salad, slaw, a staple in the Bahamas peas and rice and fried plantains. It was all amazing!
Rosie driving us back across the island to the dinghy dock.
An international wall of license plates…from all over the world. We didn’t have one to contribute.
Sammy’s Place….the people are so friendly!!
Lunch and wifi at Sammy’s
A great laundry mat too
He quieted the sea with His power
