Berry Islands; Tomorrow: Nassau

Two huge diving sailboats, Morning Star and Pirate’s Lady pulled up at our dock Tuesday night around 5 p.m. One was dockside, the other moored to it. Each boat had 22 divers.

The guys met Christine, a young deckhand from Texas. She has a marine sciences degree. Her grandfather works at WCMC in Cape May! She brought us marinated steaks left from their barbecue that night and we had just finished dinner. It was my turn to cook last night, so I cooked them up.

They pulled away 7:30 a.m. yesterday and went around the bend to help Elliott Emery pull his 37 ft. Wauquiez “Chance” off the rocks. It’s a French boat, built in 1972. He’s been sailing for 30 years. His boat was beached while anchoring in 6 ft. seas and 25 knot winds. Herbie, the marina owner, has graciously given him a room and Elliott was helping around here.

We woke up yesterday morning and quickly put the motor on the dinghy to go watch them try to pull it off and they were successful!

Elliott is formerly from New York and Annapolis and now lives in New Smyrna Beach, FL. He went to Eleuthera to help a friend build a deck on a house. The materials were stolen from the job site, so he went to Nassau for a few days and stopped in Frazier Hog Cay, Berry Islands, because of the storm, on his way back to FL. It was the same storm that ripped our jib sail. It sure wasn’t his week!

There was lots of cheering as it was pulled off. I took some pictures and videos for Elliott. One of the other dinghies got a line wrapped around his prop. We went over to help him, but he got it off as we reached him.

Chuck went out on the dinghy to explore for a few hours yesterday. He came back soaked, but had a good time exploring Chub Cay. He said it's where the mega boats are. No wonder that dockage starts out at $5 a foot! He was searching for a little store to buy eggs and bread, but was told "No, mon, store closed today. But it will be opened tomorrow." LOL. So we had pancakes this morning. Jazzy and I stayed behind, but the Internet was down the entire day. It’s very frustrating to not be able to get online. There’s nothing to do here, nowhere to walk to or shop, so it’s frustrating when you can’t get online.

We've been online all day today, so we're catching up on e-mails and our blogs.

Here's a photo Patti took the other day of Jazzy on my lap while I was updating my blog. She's been so good. It's boring for her here since I can't put her down. I can’t walk Jazzy anywhere. There are prickly “stickers” that get stuck in her paws and hair every time I put her down in the dirt and in the grass. So she can only walk on the dock.

I ordered a new jib sail this morning and we're hopefully having it shipped to Alan and Patti's house. I e-mailed Alan to make sure they'll be around when we get back to South Florida.

Meanwhile, we'll get the leech line sewn in tomorrow so we can use it until we get the new one.

We're thinking of dropping the sail off and heading to the Exumas for a few days. We'll see how the weather is.