Stranded Naked/Cheeseburger in Paradise Party

On July 3rd, an Epic Party is Planned

Looking forward to this years Cheeseburger Beach Party July 3, 2009 hosted by "Stranded Naked" houseboat owners. It's a day of free cheeseburgers, hot dogs and drinks and marks the beginning of the Abacos Regatta. The hosts are big Jimmy Buffett fans so his music will be blasting the entire day and night.

The party looks like a blast and, so I've heard, is the highlight of the summer for many boaties.

Here are some photos and more information from last year's party to check out.

Promise to post photos and an update after we have attended.

shannon norrell

Good Weather Software, Email over Satellite

Have been hanging with some folks who are preparing for a run from Bahamas to Bermuda, then to Sweden. They use MaxSea for weather http://tr.im/qm1T

They also use Iridium and, per my suggestion, uuplus.com to capture email over satellite as they go.

Sunday at Nippers

Nippers is Legendary

Every Sunday, on Great Guana Cay, a party of epic proportions takes place at a place called Nippers. Although not all that "Bahamian", in the sense that most folks attending are boaties from the surrounding islands, it is a "must experience" Bahamas agenda item.

We arrived in 30 knot winds and dropped anchor. Our big 70lb Bruce did not do the job against those wins and waves and we began to drag. Thankfully the windlass worked well and I was able to pull up the anchor without breaking another finger.

After almost crashing into a boat on a mooring (as in, I had to read out push us away. One more inch and it would have been major smashage), Julie almost fell overboard trying to grab a mooring ball with the boat hook. In fact, it pulled the boat hook all the way in and she had to let it go as the boat bounced over the top of the can. Thankfully, an angel appeared in the form of a Moorings captain in a bad-ass, brand new looking dingy. He handed her the rope tied to the ball and we were cleated in minutes. I later bought him his drink of choice when we met up at Nippers later in the day.

The one rule of thumb, apparently, to be followed on a visit here is not to drink more than two "Nippers" or "Guana Grabbers" as they are beguilingly potent. In fact, after we walked through the jungle and up the hill into the Nippers establishment, there were four football-player-sized fellows trying to ply a passed out friend from a chair into whiich he had fallen into a shaded pit sort of area. He had not minded the drink limit restrictions and was more passed out than any drunk I've ever seen. Eventually they got him in a chair and, on my suggestion, made him drink a glass of salty pool water so he would throw up. It worked like like a charm, but was not pretty.

The layout of nippers is fantastic. It is is three stories high, with two salt-water pools; one cascading into the other and sits on the windward side of Great Guana Cay Island on a white sand beach. The frozen drinks truly are ass-kickers and mot folks have theirs either in one of the pools or out in the crystal-clear blue waters of the Atlantic. Lots of "hot bodies" abound (mine not included) and there was surely some topless showmanship going on.

We decided to spend the night on the mooring ball and head in the next morning, so I ordered my third "Nipper" drink. I don't know what's in them but i tell you, four would not have been a possibility.

The girls had a great time playing in the sand, we had a nice dinner at Grabbers (on the Leeward side) and motore out in the dingy for a rough night on the ball with seas averaging 3, surging to 4 or 5 feet at times and winds of at least 35 knots all night.

Next morning leaving, we heard a high-pitched squeal which I somehow knew was a loose alternator belt. I tightened her up as best as I could but we couldn't realistically run the boat over 1500RPMs, which would have made for a s-l-o-w return home. Thankfully the wind was still howling at 35 knots at just the right angle, so we dropped the ball, motored out a bit to get past the anchorage and sailed all the way back, averaging 6.5knots with just the jib up.

One bit of ~"fun" that happened along the way was we hit a squall where the winds gusted to 50kts and we had horizontal rain. Julie went below and I was left to fend for myself at the helm. Not being ablew to see AT ALL, I had the wise idea of putting on Mackenzie's dive mask to deal with the rain -- worked like a charm.

At some point, i plan to post some photos and vieos we took that day at Nippers.

"What's that Smell" - More Major 'Tingums Busted

What is that Horrible Smell?

Julie says to me after the electronics guy left? We looked in the engine compartment and the bilge was completely filled with diesel fuel. Turning the bilge pump on appeared to have no effect (and was otherwise not a nice thing to be doing in a marina anyway).

The next morning, Julie and I are walking to find a bank (recall I had to give all of my cash away to "Karma" and a friend of mine, Captain Anthony Edgecombe, happens to drive by. He is not only a 500 ton captain, but a diesel mechanic and a hell of a nice Bahamian to boot.

We had actually attended church with him the previous Sunday in Treasure Cay to celebrate fathers day.

Anyways, he drove around to buy a smallish bilge pump, gathered some tanks, and helped me to pump out what we figure was at least 20 gallons of diesel fuel out ofthe bilge. We took the cans into town and paid a fellow with a service station $1.00/gallon to dump the fuel into some big 55 gallon tanks he has there.

Next day, Anthony came back and helped me to finish emptying the bilge and to diagnose the two pumps I have in place. One is "always on" and has a built-in float valve on it (to tell it when the water level is rising in the bilge). It appears to be seized up and is the reason the bilge was not automatically emptied.

Prognosis: Automatic Bilge Pump is Busted. This sort of pump, with the built-in float valve, can only be foun in the states, says Anthoony.

Next, we pulled the "Manual Bilge Pump", which is supposed to come on only when you throw a switch and diagnosed it. It turned out to be also dead and full of water inside of it's electroics compartment.

Prognosis: Manual Bilge Pump is busted. The good news is that this sort of thing can be bought in March Harbor, so Anthony runs me over to the store and I get a 1000 gallon/minute pump for I think about $259.00. He installs it and we are good to go for the moment with at least a manual bilge pump that will work just fine so long as we are on the boat to keep an eye on the bilge. It will not work for periods of time where we are away from the boat so the automatic-float-valve type will definitley need to be done ASAP.

Gas Tank Problems

So as to why the bilge filled with fuel, that remains to be answered. Perhaps the fill hose to the tank has a loose hose clamp or the vent cap is loose. Who knows? Unfortunately, to get to the fuel tank, you have to remove four big golf cart batteries first so that will have to wait for another day. I tell you one thing, when I have the boat retrofitted this winter, I am going to have a gas guage installed! (Can you believe there is no gas guage? That's just crazy man)

Bahamas Update - A Major 'Tingum is Broke

The Inverter is Busted

Inasmuch as we are having problems with brand-new $3,500 Xantrex Prosine 3.0 I installed earlier this year on the boat, the very first thing we did on arrival in March Harbor was to call over the expert in inverters, a fellow who owns "Merlin's Marine Electronics."

He showed up right away and went to work. After disconnecting everthing except the batteries, we found it to appear to be working and "ready to invert".

We then went and bought a power strip, cut off the ends and connected that directy to the inverter (so as to bypass any potential wiring problems that might otherwise exist in the boat).

The minute we hit the "Please Invert" button, a loud explosion (like a firecracker) came from within the inverter which, he says, was probably a transistor blowing up. Just to be double-sure, we reset her and tried again. Same loud pop.

Prognosis: Inverter must be returned to the manufacturer

So we wired the boat to bypass the inverter completely. He was kind and only charged me a service call fee of $50 and was on is way.

We have A/C while we're at the dock so we have air conditioning and the kids can watch videos, so things aren't all that bad -- I just have to remember to either run the engine periodically or to charge up the batteries using a regular automotive-type battery charger I bougt here in town ($144.50)

Bahamas Update

Treasure Cay to Marsh Harbor

Yesterday, we moved the boat from Treasure Cay to Marsh Harbor yesterday, a distance of about 22 miles.

We have had the boat in Treasure Cay for the past year and decided we had to move her to get nearer to "civiliation" and services. There are a number of fairly major things wrong with the boat; most notably the fact that the brand new $3,500 inverter I had installed earlier in the year was not working at all and giving some sort of "fault code".

The expert, within the islands, for inverters being in Marsh Harbor primarily prompted our move.

On the way out, we were at the fuel dock and when the helper strung the hose over the helm/steerage area, apparently his hose threw the engine into reverse. The engine wasn't running at the time but when we were all done fueling and I started the motor, she backed into a $1,000,000++ yact packed about two feet behind us also at the fuel dock. It scratched their paint a bit and rubbed maybe 1/2" of their "gold leaf" logo off.

Nedless to say the owners were in an uproar asking if we have insurance (which we do not) and then, "how much money do you have"? Anyway, we settled for giving them all of the cash I had on hand at the time ($174) and they were satisfied. If the same thing had happened to us, btw, we would have let it go. Things like that happen in the islands. BTW, their boat's name was "Karma". Funny that.

So the sail down was without a hitch, although we arrived at low tide. The dockmaster was amazed I didn't run aground on the way in -- I guess Julie and mine's skills reading the waters in this neck of the woods are getting pretty good.