Okay, after smashing my hand, and with the loss of a significant percentage of my typing fingers, I stopped updating this blog. Time went by, and my hand is taking longer to recover than I would have ever imagined. Now I'm so far behind that catching up is intimidating, and starting to feel a little bit like work. So... maybe I won't. Or at least not in as much detail. A lot of this time is a blur now, with big chunks of time spent just trying to appease my hand.
In the spirit of the Princess Bride, "Let me explain... No, there is too much. Let me sum up."
It was more than a week before we could even think of leaving the MH marina. My hand was still very painful, and once the middle finger stopped hogging all of the attention, it became clear that my entire right hand was messed up, all except the thumb (thank goodness). I still couldn't use my right for much of anything, so I spent much of my time rediscovering my left hand. It's good to have two of important things.
In mid-May we finally started limping back across the Abacos towards the states. On the way we were attacked by a swarm of bees while still a half mile off from the main island. I'm somewhat allergic to their stings, but it had been so long since I had been stung we really didn't know what would happen. Heather bravely fought them off armed only with a back scratcher and a squeegee.
As we reached the western side of the Abacos we headed into another storm that was at least five miles across, based on the radio traffic. It was wet but not bad at first, but then we spotted a waterspout behind us. As we approached Little Grand Cay the wind became worse, 30 or 40 knots gusting apparent, but against the prevailing wind of maybe 15 knots, so it was really blowing. We weren't going to make the tricky entrance to the marina in this weather so we decided to just toss out the anchor in 10 feet of water a half mile off and wait it out. What we probably should have done in Fishers Bay.
As we reached the western side of the Abacos we headed into another storm that was at least five miles across, based on the radio traffic. It was wet but not bad at first, but then we spotted a waterspout behind us. As we approached Little Grand Cay the wind became worse, 30 or 40 knots gusting apparent, but against the prevailing wind of maybe 15 knots, so it was really blowing. We weren't going to make the tricky entrance to the marina in this weather so we decided to just toss out the anchor in 10 feet of water a half mile off and wait it out. What we probably should have done in Fishers Bay.
It was very bumpy, but after 45 minutes or so the weather broke. The sun came out and the water practically glassed over. Little did we know at the time, but this was our only chance to get into the marina. The remaining bit of storm was countering the prevailing wind leaving little net. But we were tired and missed our chance before the prevailing wind came back up. It was bumpy all night where we were, like Dean Martin lying on the floor but still needing to hold on bumpy. We couldn't get into the marina in these conditions, so we decided to get on the other side of the island out of most of the wind and the bigger waves.
We had picked this location because it had the last cell tower on the northwest corner of the Abacos island chain (seen below). We needed to get weather updates to pick a crossing time. It was several days before we got a decent window then left in the mid afternoon. We wanted to be off the banks and near the gulfstream before dark. We chugged west toward Florida all night.
Usually I was a little urpy during crossings, but the seasickness meds we picked up in the Bahamas worked great for me. This was fortunate, because for once, Heather was not so good. I ended up doing almost all of the crossing, resorting at last to the single handed technique of napping for 15 minutes at a time, looking around for five, then dropping back to sleep again. I woke up once to the strong smell of fish. I looked up and there was thousands of flying fish zooming all around the boat for the next couple minutes, then they were gone.
About mid day we reached the Florida coast (below). Once we made the inlet and were on the ditch again Heather was better, took over, and I collapsed. I was never one of those stay up all night people. I woke up three hours later to help us dock back at Vero Beach, then I went back to sleep again until the next morning. We did little but eat and sleep and maybe read a little for three days.
Well this is a little long for summing up, even for a few weeks, but better than usual for me.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment