Bradford Marine to Lucaya…

Over the weekend of November 11th, we worked feverishly to get the boat put back together after sitting all summer in the boatyard, so that we could get the boat launched and back into the water by Monday because we wanted to join up with our friends in Lucaya as soon as possible. To our surprise the boat was in pretty good condition. No leaks, mold or bugs.The boat looked fairly clean probably due to rainfall throughout the summer, except for the teak deck in the cockpit which was coated with a black dust probably from the nearby oil refinery (we didn’t realize how dirty it was until we took a look at the bottom of our feet). We together, put up a brand new crisp Jib sail and the window/enclosures on the flybridge. Rick installed a new chart plotter, and changed filters for the water-maker, hosed off the boat, fixed our vacuum cleaner (which we also use to blow up our dinghy and SUP boards) , checked oil in the engines, and a lot of other odds and ends to make sure the boat was ready to go. We also had to find homes for all of the stuff we brought over.

Our boat bottom looked fantastic which had been painted a few days prior to our arrival. This was the first time that we have not sanded and painted our boat bottom ourselves. It’s a dirty, toxic job even with the proper protective gear. There’s no escaping it.

The boatyard was pretty much dead over the weekend and nobody was working except for the security guard at the gate entrance. There is only one key for the women’s restroom/showers so I had to go to the guard office each time I wanted to use the shower and bring it back when I was done. They were nice showers though and worth the trouble……good pressure and hot. And......you can take them as long as you want! On the boat…we don’t get that luxury. Always having to conserve. Turn the water on, rinse. Turn the water off. Soap up, rinse and get out!

On Saturday, I took a taxi ride just 6 miles away to Solomon’s grocery store (for a $50 roundtrip fee) just to get some food to tide us over for a couple of days. I could stock up later once we got to Lucaya. Rick later in the day discovered that our start batteries for both engines were bad. So we had to find a place to get new ones and the options were limited. Only one place on the island that would carry batteries and that was Car Quest. We didn’t want to pay another $50 + for a taxi ride along with the expensive price of what the batteries would cost, so we called our friend, Gilles (pronounced Jeel), who is actually the owner of the dock/condos where we were planning to move the boat to on Monday. He was more than happy to pick us up and take us to Car Quest in town to buy new batteries. We were going to bring the bad batteries in for the core charge, but Gilles said that they would not take them. We found out later while checking out that we would have only received .44 cents in the exchange. In the states you can get about $30 - $40.

Monday morning, 7:30am, as soon as the business office opened, we settled our bill (gasp!) and requested to be launched as soon as possible. Deepak our project manager, got a crew together and got us back into the water within the hour. Easy peasy and the engines started right up and off we went.

We made it to the dock at Gilles house in Lucaya, where Hope was already docked and waiting to grab our lines. But just before we got to the dock and we were still out in the ocean entering the channel at Ocean Reef Cut, Kory and Gracie met us in their dinghy!

We plan to stay here for a week or more to wait for a good weather window to continue heading towards the Exumas.