New waters!

Gray skies, gray waters...exploring new territory!

Exploration! We’re currently in new-to-us waters: on the Great Bahama Bank, running down the Blossom Channel towards the remote southern Bahamas islands of the Jumentos and Ragged Islands. Most folks don’t go this route, at least, not many snowbird cruisers who are heading to Georgetown, Exumas. Frankly, we haven’t seen a soul, which is just fine. We're still enjoying the following seas although still have the same dull weather….overcast, gray skies, with stronger winds: NNE 20-25 kts today. Not great VFR, as the sun is ahead of us and the skies are very dim -- the water is gun-metal gray and we can’t see a thing as far as coral heads go. Still, the depths of 30' or more are reassuring, and our charts and known waypoints have proven accurate, so we’re proceeding ahead, watching as best we can.

Equinox in the middle of the Great Bahama Bank. Not much out there! 

We had a minor crisis this morning, for we thought we had a fresh water leak in the engine room. (Nooooo!!!) Ron was very unhappy to discover a trickle of water coming into the bilge, flowing down the hull from outboard, under of the starboard fuel tank …which we thought it was from the water line to the refrigerator water tank/ice-maker. We shut off the sea cock for that water line, but water continued to flow...ugh! Ron then re-traced the ice-maker water line, and he realized that it didn’t run that far outboard. He then looked at every possible fresh water source he could think of before he realized he’d left the engine room A/C on. The compressor unit was all frozen, trying to cope with the heat in the engine room, so its condensation pan overflowing. As the pan isn’t plumbed into anything, it was overflowing into the bilge. Mystery solved – whew! Talk about new waters…these we can live without!