Just Like Home

December 14, 2020

Just a short note today about the latest goings on. I hung out at anchor on the West end of Paradise Island for a few days waiting for Megan to arrive. Soon enough she did show up and is now moving between joy and unconsciousness as she catches up on much needed sleep. Here she is in one of her awake moments.

This morning we put the boat back together (dinghy up, stabilizer in, etc.) and headed back toward the Berry Islands. The weather should be very calm for the next few days and Megan wanted to anchor somewhere peaceful. So be it.

Just a few miles away from Chub Cay, we will sit at anchor until Thursday, then head back to pick up Jinhee on Friday morning. It is quiet here (we are the only boat) anchored out and the stars are out (with no moon, spectacular).

Given the amount of time I expect to spend at anchor over the next few months, I thought it would be a good time to change out bulbs to LED, at least for the most commonly used lights aboard. Yesterday was that day. It didn’t go as planned.

When I was in North Palm Beach, I had the folks at YachtTech doing their work, and part of that had them pull down a ceiling panel (they are held up with Velcro if you can believe that) but to get them down, you have to pull out the light fixtures. The guys at YachtTech looked at my light fixtures, gave a disapproving look and carried on. I did note the look.

As I pulled out the fourth fixture from the salon ceiling to swap bulbs, the meaning of that ‘look’ was clarified. The fixture practically fell apart in my hands. It seems they get brittle with age and the metal heat shield splits. Probably not a great thing, but with LED’s the heat shield is less necessary, so I put them back in and began the search for replacements.

Luckily YachtTech has a few of these (nearly irreplaceable) parts in their inventory and luckily I made friends with a few other Nordhavn owners at the dock while I was waiting for repairs. A number of those replacements are on another Nordhavn heading to The Bahamas tomorrow. Fun, fun. Great thanks to the folks on N60 Carmanah.

We dropped anchor around lunch time. A brief rainstorm passed through, then we went for a swim and enjoyed a family game of Scrabble. In a sign of my advancing age (or Megan’s) she kicked my butt. She claims she isn’t very good, which is a bad sign for my mental acuity.

Tomorrow it will likely be more of the same, except we will launch the dinghy to explore the nearby shallows and perhaps swim from a beach. It sure is nice to not be bundled up and choosing between the fall coat and the winter coat every morning.