Waiting in Nassau

Early morning departure for Patrick and Rose - -Willie the cab driver was here before 7:30 checking out if we were ready. We said our good byes outside the entrance to the marina and sent them off to Miami/ Jacksonville/ St. Augustine to visit with Jay, Pegg and "Tia Peddie".

The rest of Friday was spent washing two weeks of salt off the decks, doing three loads of laundry AND trying to upload a week's worth of pictures for the blog. I easily spent 10-12 hours WAITING while the little blue glow-circle circled and circled and sometimes successfully uploaded a picture or two. Dan also spent a fair amount of time helping John and Betty re-wire their VHS radio as it wasn't transmitting worth a darn. They were so happy with his great electrical work (Steve take note!!) that they decided they needed to take us out to dinner. I must admit, I was a big help - - when they needed to test the radio, they called Brunelle and I had to leave my post at the computer and answer! We followed the dockmaster Peter's advice and went to the local Chinese restaurant. I don't think I've ever been to a Chinese restaurant before where the waiters didn't offer "flied lice" and one of the entrees was conch and bean stew!

We decided to "eat Nassau style" today, so we had breakfast at the Texaco station where they offered a true "Bahamian breakfast". It was an omelette served on Bahamian bread with lettuce and tomato. Really quite good! We then went to the biggest marine store in Nassau (which was having a 20% off the entire store sale today) and got a new gas tank and hose for the dinghy. We had noticed that ours was beginning to show its age. Back aboard we swapped out the old for the new and then joined Andiamo for lunch "a la Irene's". We had heard about this lady that parks her car in the parking lot in front of the marina about a block away from ours each day and serves lunch out of large vats in her trunk. Today she had chicken or turkey souse, pigs feet, conch stew, and johnny cakes, but she was out of peas and rice. We chose to get chicken souse and conch stew and johnny cakes and took it back to Andiamo to eat it. The chicken souse was not unlike a chicken stew but there were lots of bones and skin, so it took some doing to eat it - but very tasty.

Miss Irene said this was her tired smile and I can believe it, she gets up at 3 am to begin cooking for the day. Betty asked what she did when the food was gone and she mimicked - - - sleep!

The afternoon flew by and at six we headed over to Savage Son, a Valiant 40 tied up next to Andiamo, because they had spent lots of time cruising Eleuthera and we are hoping to head there next week. They had lots good tips and we look forward to new territory. Back aboard Brunelle we ate a quick non-Bahamian dinner (spaghetti) and decided to Skype with Katherine and her girls (Ryan is in Florida visiting family.) Katherine had heard that the moon was closer to earth tonight than it has been for over 18 years or something and Zoe requested we get a picture of it, so here are two moon shots - which is the better one? I couldn't decide.

I just put the camera on one of our pilings and snapped, sometimes it took forever and other times it snapped right away. Don't know why, but you can see the difference.

~~~_/)~~~M&D