First Cruise of the Season
For the last month or so we have been making some repairs and smaller upgrades to our Beneteau 41-foot boat, Satisfaction. Finding someone to make repairs here in Hope Town is not difficult because there are many boaters here that can fix almost anything on a boat. This is good for us because we are not that knowledgeable about boat maintenance. The other boaters do not charge you anything for their labor to do these repairs. Since they are all retired, they are just interested in helping people.
However, the difficult thing about getting your boat repaired in the Bahamas is obtaining the parts. If they are available here in the Bahamas, they are very expensive. Between the cost to ship items to the Bahamas and the Bahamas import duty, most boat parts are almost twice as expensive as obtaining the same item in the US.
Tahiti Beach on Elbow Cay
Since I was going back to the US to go to a couple doctors anyway, I took an empty suitcase with me to bring back several boat parts to be able to make the necessary repairs to Satisfaction. I brought back a digital refrigerator thermostat, a motor for our electric head, our main VHF radio that went back with my brother-in-law that needed to be repaired, new decals for our boat, and several other smaller but important items that are not available in the Bahamas. We also needed a new manual head (Satisfaction has 2 heads), but this was too large to bring back on a plane. So I had the manual head shipped from West Marine to some friends in Stuart, FL who were getting ready to bring their own boat over to Hope Town. This is another example how all boaters in the Bahamas are willing to help other boaters where they can.
After completing the most urgent boat repairs, the weather was forecast to be calm for a couple days so we took Satisfaction out for a short cruise down to Tahiti Beach. Tahiti Beach is a long stretch of beach on the southwest corner of Elbow Cay. Satisfaction and our friend on S/V Mothra anchored right off Tahiti Beach in about 7 feet of water and spent a couple days swimming, snorkeling, and walking on Tahiti Beach. Across from Tahiti Beach is another smaller island named Lubbers Quarters which only has about 60 houses on it. We had lunch at one of the two restaurants there called Lubbers Landing.
The wind was predicted to pick up significantly the next few days so we had to head back to our slip at the Hope Town Marina. And, as predicted, we have experienced three days of winds of about 20 to 30 knots.
When we got back to Hope Town, several of our boating friends had arrived from the US. So we have spent the last few days catching up with them.
Satisfaction anchored off Tahiti Beach
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