Fresh Water

Fresh water is quite the commodity when you are cruising. All the water around you is salt and unprintable! Some islands will charge you for fresh water. In the Bahamas, you can expect to pay $0.50 per gallon of potable water and $0.15 per gallon of non-potable water. 

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While fresh water is expensive, there are other ways to get it. We collect rain water, and it has been raining almost every day for the past few weeks. We collect between 20-40 gallons of water each day!

This keeps all our water tanks full, and when they are completely full, we begin to do chores that are water intensive. Our first order of business when we have too much fresh water is a daily shower!  

We usually shower once a week, but with this much fresh water we can shower every day! That makes us smell much better and feel much better too.  

The next order of business is laundry. Laundry on the boat consumes a lot of fresh water. The washing phase with all the soap uses a few gallons, and the rinsing phase can take even more water to get all the soap out! Having all this rain makes us feel confident in washing our clothes as we replenish our fresh water supply. 

No, we don't have a water-maker. We never had to go through the expense of purchasing one, nor the headache of maintaining and operating one. Instead, we just taste the deck water during the rain and when it tastes fresh, we open the tanks up and let the water pour in! 

Chafe Resistant Bowline

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When you tie a bowline to another bowline, you risk the two loops sawing on each other and actually chafing through! To prevent this, all you need to do is pass the line a few times through the loop. 

This will take any movement out of the system and allow your two lines to hold securely without the fear of chafe.  

We do this to tie the bow line of the dinghy to the painter. The painter has a bowline tied in it and we simply tie up to the loop. Having these wraps means that we can sleep easily without worrying about the dinghy sawing through its painter and drifting away quietly into the night.  

Worm, Parcel, and Serve

Over the past seven months of cruising, our anchor snubber was starting to show some significant wear. The options were simple, either replace the snubber, or fix and protect it from further damage.

Being how we are cruising on a limited budget and marine supplies are not as easy to find in remote locations, such as uninhabited islands in the Bahamas, we decided to repair and protect our snubber with materials that we had on hand. 

Since the chafing that had occurred was still very superficial, there was no structural damage to the line and no need to perform a mending splice before the protective layers were added. The first step in the process is to worm the rope. This is where you lay a smaller line into the valleys of the lay of the rope. Three-lay requires three strands be wormed into the lay. The strands run in the direction of the lay and will nestle in nicely. The idea of worming is to make the outer edge of the rope more uniform and round. 

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The next step is to parcel the rope. In historical times, this was done using tarred cloth. The tar helped seal water out from the line and protected the hemp from moisture and rot. In modern times, when the rope is made out of nylon, the purpose of parceling is to hold the worming in place. Hockey stick tape or friction tape works great for this application. The tape is to be wrapped in the direction of the lay. If on running rigging, the direction of wrap doesn't matter as the rope will move around. If on standing rigging, the wrapping is to go from bottom to top. This will create a shingle effect to help keep water out of the core. 

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With the section wormed and parceled, the last step is to service the line. Service is the process by which a sacrificial line is wrapped around the line very tightly. Any chafe will occur on the sacrificial part that can be easily replaced at less expense than replacing the actual line itself.  

Service is always wrapped opposite the direction of the lay, so that as the rope is tensioned and pulled, the service will wrap tighter.  

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In the end, the snubber is protected against future chafe and will continue to hold our ground tackle as we cruise new and distant waters.

Blue Hole at Hoffman's Cay

Hoffman's Cay is a small island in the Berry Islands, Bahamas. In this small island is a magical experience, a blue hole! 

To get to the blue hole, you first land your dinghy on the beach and then follow the trail through the jungle. The vegetation here is very dense, so you will need to follow the cleared trail. 

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Suddenly, you will made a turn and arrive at the splendor of the blue hole! Blue holes are nothing more than sink holes that are filled with water. They can be hundreds of feet deep, and the intensity of their color is astounding. It was very epic to encounter this after having walked through the jungle of vegetation on this island. 

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As you approach the cliffs edge, the blue hole becomes even more breath taking! There must be some form of communication to the ocean because we saw a few sea turtles swimming around in the water!

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The Bahamas are actually just limestone flats that have been pushed up from the ocean floor. Limestone is what caves are made out of, as it can easily be dissolved and washed away. The sides of this sink hole are lined with caves, stalagmites, stalagtites, and columns.  

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This splendid vista was just a short dinghy ride away from where Maddie and I experienced our lovely sunset picnic the night before!

Paradise

Our next anchorage after Johnny jumped ship was pure and perfect paradise. Once again, it was just Maddie and I. We could walk along the beach holding hands as we listened to the waves as all of our cares and worries washed away with the outgoing tide.

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Maddie and I explored the tiny island and watched the waves crash in from the Atlantic side onto the steep cliff faces where powerful waves turned into mighty spray. We then returned to the calm beach overlooking our boat Wisdom.  

We had a nice picnic dinner on the beach as we watched the sunset. Everything was perfect!