Cruising on "ARITA": THREE GALLONS TO THE MILE........................

Even when the wedding had sort of ended and some of the guests had left, the dancing continued right on. The Bride, Groom and others finally left on the ferry to Marsh Harbour, but that is as far as they got. All flights back to Florida were cancelled due to horrendous weather that ended up killing three port employees when one of the giant container cranes in the port was ripped off its foundations by a tornado. Mangled steel and chaos and without warning. The photo in the newspaper shows the approaching grey wall of the tornado. The last wedding guests, as in the photo below, departed on the Hope Town ferry DONNY VIII, when the worst of the storm was over......... And we could finally make our own plans for heading out and heading south....... Finally south..... We have been in the Bahamas long enough to almost qualify for citizenship........... Time to move south and get the engine going, fuel up and move out.................Next stop.... NASSAU about a hundred miles south and a chance to make sweet water with our watermaker....... Yes, for every mile we motor we make a delicious, sweet three gallons of pure water................Something you rarely think about when you turn on a tap at home................ But priceless when you live on board and you either make your own from saltwater, or you have to buy it for as much as 65 cents a gallon. Then again bottled water costs much more than gasoline (petrol)...............Now how does that work when it comes all the way from the Middle East and that bottle of water from just around the corner?

Then in NASSAU the two "Queens" get together for a quick informal discussion. The one sitting in the chair and looking somewhat stone-faced is Queen Victoria............... It is nice to be back in somewhat familiar territory. ...... There is shopping to be done and parts to be bought and new areas to discover.......... And the traditional wooden Bahamian sloops that we had photographed on our last visit to Nassau, are being repainted in readyness for the "Family Islands Regatta" to be held in Georgetown, EXUMAS, later this month....... This is a huge pride thing and the Bahamian man below, Mr. Marty Bullard, the Captain of the sloop "HEATHCLIFF", is the man to beat. He is the ' No. 1 Captain ' in the Bahamas. We hope to still be in Georgetown when this event takes place.

And then to the hardware and industrial supply stores for bits and pieces...... We had arrived in Nassau on Thursday night, not realising that this was the 'Good Friday' Easter weekend with everything closed except for a couple of hours on Saturday morning, so hit it quick and fast..............and round it off with a most delicious lunch of fish stew at the Double 'D' restaurant......... Huge chunks of grouper...... a killer meal for the price...... check it out next time you are in NASSAU............. And then with full stomachs we walked to the fish markets, which is really fish being sold, fresh or frozen, from the deck of all the fishing boats that have come home for Easter. ....... Fish of every kind, shape and size.