Wind Sensor | Cement Donkeys

Can’t Beat the Water – Georgetown, Red Shanks, Bahamas, December 21, 2025

Friends told us our first year here in Georgetown that we would be back to the Bahamas and you won’t be able to beat the beautiful turquoise water here no matter how far south to Grenada you go. I am here to attest that this is a true statement and at this point we have certainly become “water snobs.” Since Thanksgiving in the Exuma Land and Sea Park we have meandered our way down through the Exuma Islands, including Emerald Bay (which is a lovely little marina to get diesel fuel), Black Point, and Elizabeth Harbor.

There are a couple of downsides we got going for us at this point. Number one, Ron needed to climb the mast to replace the wind sensor we broke off on one of the bridges (El Pablo) on the intercoastal. When we got down to Georgetown, he tried a couple times, but his fear of heights didn’t let him get to the top. Remember the sailing karma we try to create? We got it. The guy Ron ended up helping saw the cable from his anchor was parked right next to us here in Elizabeth Harbor and has offered to climb our mast and replace the wind sensor! Whew! Now Ron will eventually need to climb the mast to polish stainless rigging but it won’t be such a crisis and we can get to this in our own timeline while having a wind sensor (telling us wind speed) in the meantime. Very nice and thank you to Dane from SV Tamika.

Issue number two was that I broke my big toe again. Ugh. I slipped and fell on the back of the boat getting on my paddle board and bent my toes back completely. I can walk in flip flops, but it has turned nicely bruised and I cannot wear tennis shoes or fins. Guess I won’t be hiking much for the next few weeks until I can stand wearing real shoes again. I can still swim and paddle board on my knees but I think we will be laying low here and have decided to move over to a mooring ball in Red Shanks, where we are the only boat in the bay. It offers 360 protection, a nice dose of privacy, and easy access to town for grocery and propane. We are fairly close to turtle bay and plan to head over to feed the turtles and too many large red starfish to count. It is lovely and if we are stuck for bit this is a great place to spend Christmas. Looks like we are attending the lovely potluck planned here on Chat ‘N Chill Beach!

Time for a Reset – Jolly Harbor, Antigua, December 15, 2023

So lately all Ron has done is work on the boat since it seems as if everything is broken. Here’s one example, we paid someone to climb the mast for us only to find out that the spare wind sensor we had…was also broken. Well, now we get to buy a new one of those, in addition to a depth gage since ours is already 14+ years old and replace both of those…again. Not to mention the laundry list of other projects Ron has been constantly working on. At least we got the streaming light successfully replaced.

We had both been missing being home for Christmas and originally didn’t commit to being home. Well, we were going to attempt to make it to St. Marten to fly out but based on the huge north swell we have going on with 12ft seas, we decided to change our tickets and fly out directly from Jolly Harbor. This means we had two very tight layovers and went through security & Immigration 3 times but made all three flights to get home in one day. On the last leg, everyone was loaded on the plane when the captain came on and announced there was a mystery error code that they needed to fix and sadly they were not able to, so we all offloaded the plane and loaded everyone on a new one (at least they had one!). We made it to my sister’s where we were crashing for the next couple of weeks about 2:00am.

She was heading down to see my parents and we were cat sitting for the first week! The kitties were good and easy, so it was a non-event for us to manage them. They were gone the first week and then all the kids were spending Christmas together. We made a big turkey again, made a big hunt for their Christmas gifts, and a good time was had by all. We also had a chance to see all of them individually throughout the two weeks, so we got a good fill of family life again. The only downside is Ron and I both got a nice chest cold I can only assume from the airplane but at least that wasn’t COVID. We have one more week, post-Christmas, to enjoy the cold and cloudy Ohio before heading back and deciding what our continued sailing journey looks like. One suitcase full of spare parts is also going to accompany us down to the islands to help with our updates.