[Complains, whines, takes a brief break from complaining...]

When Mark and Conrad play stuffed animals, they verbally script out dialog for each other, including stage direction for the appropriate emotional response ("gets angry", "makes frowny face", "stomps off"). Hence the title of this blog post.

We finally got our raw water pump the day after it was supposed to arrive, for which we were relatively happy. It was $115 to get it from Florida to Spanish Wells and clear it through Bahamian customs (the cost to ship it overnight within the States was only $20). And we managed to avoid the steep 40% import duty which would have added a couple hundred more dollars because we were a "vessel in transit" with a cruising permit and the pump was "critical" to the ship's propulsion.  So there's a big reason to keep as many spares as you can on board. Matt put in the pump and tested it--no leaks, yea! We fired up the engines and everything seemed to be working as expected. Even though there was lots of fixing and reworking, it seemed like it was all under control. Now when things break, it seems that Matt has a pretty good handle on what to do. Some expertise even. Swoosh, nothing but net.

Now, where were we?  Oh yeah, expertise...and that's when the port engine sputtered and died. Over the next few hours and then days as we left Spanish Wells and headed for the Exumas, Matt would bleed air from the lines and the engine would run fine. For a spell. And then it would take on more air and die out. Every now and then the starboard engine would vie for attention and sputter out as well. It seemed that Matt's moving the fuel pump to be after the Racor filters introduced some air into the system somewhere. They're working fine for now but for awhile we held our collective breaths every time we motored somewhere (which was basically all the way from Spanish Wells because of the lack of wind).

So even though there was no wind predicted for a few days, we decided to motor over to the top of the Exumas.  We figured being stuck at anchor for a few days in a place where we could fish and forage was better than being stuck someplace where we couldn't. Besides, we could test out the engines a bit more.  So off we went.  First stop was Ship's Channel Cay, where our friends on Good Trade promised us lobsters crawling all over the reef.  Apparently they shot all the stupid ones because there were none to be seen when we arrived. 

The next days there were squalls predicted so we had to find an anchorage with protection from the west/southwest. Our two options were Allen's Cay, just around the corner, and Norman's Cay, further south. We decided to wander past Allen's, even though there were a whole boat load of masts sticking up. We had just made the decision that the anchorage was too crowded and were continuing on to Norman's when we noticed a mast moving above the rocks that now blocked the view of the anchorage.  The lone boat that was occupying southwest Allen's Cay (where there's room for one boat, and only one boat) was leaving and we slid right in. Even better, our friends from Shambala happened to be there as well. We have been having a great time fishing and hanging out with several kid boats in the anchorage: Shambala, Quartet, and Shamrock.