Meeting Up with an Old Friend

Day 20:  Sunday, March 15, 2015

Today was another hang out day in Leeward Yacht Club.  It was very similar to the last several days.  Breakfast of sausage gravy on toast, lunch of taco and tuna sandwich and and reading and tinkering with the boat.

But the end of the day was for me a very special day.  Probably a week ago, I received an email for a former childhood neighbor who had been following the blog.  In his note, he said that he and his wife would be in Marsh Harbor on Great Abaco Island and wondered if we would be coming that way.  Marsh Harbor is not really that far from Green Turtle Cay but there is a very shallow barrier between the two locations.  The way around it via the Whale Channel Passage which is a stretch that has a section that is about 3 miles long in which you must travel out into the open Atlantic.  That is no big deal when the winds are light and not traveling from the east, however, the winds have not been light and they have been from the east so the swells are quite large and dangerous for a small boat and especially one with less than the designed amount of ballast.

Bruce and Bonnie Williams coming in on True Colors

So, I contacted my friend, Bruce Williams and his wife Bonnie to ask if they could come here.  They said that the window for the Whale Passage looked good for them for today so they would come here and spend the night.  Bruce asked if I would check with the marina to see if they had space for their 54 foot cruiser and its 23 foot tender.  It worked out that all of the really big boats here had left and there was plenty of room at the outside end of the dock where we were moored so on they came.

As they approached it was quite an impressive sight.  Bruce had towed the tender on a long line until he got to the Sound and then he pulled it up and tied it on the “hip”, the aft portion of the port side of the boat.  He very skillfully maneuvered the boat around 180 degrees and smoothly pulled alongside of the dock. 



Bruce received a 9.8 grade on his landing.  I don't give 10.0s

The boat, True Colors, is truly a gorgeous boat.  It has all of the latest navigational equipment and comforts that you can imagine.  The interior is immaculately laid out and designed.  It was really neat.  We sat and talked over a beer for a bit and then he and Bonnie took showers in preparation for a cocktail cruise on the tender.

The tender is powered by two 115 hp Yamaha engines and is also tricked out with all of the latest gadgets that you would want on a runabout.  It has a stereo and designer lighting that make it a really fun vessel to travel to the little creeks and coves into which the big boat can’t travel. 

We all crawled about the tender and headed north to Crab Cay where we pulled

The Tender

way back into a large cove, shut off the engine and drifted while we began getting to know Bruce again after 50 plus years of being apart and Bonnie.  Bruce’s family and my family were very close during our formative years.  We lived less than a stone’s throw apart and spent most days playing together and traveling as families together from the time I was in the third grade until I graduated from high school.  I would estimate that our families ate our evening meals together an average of three nights a week. So Bruce and I had a lot of stories to dig up and spin for our patient wives.

The Bar at Green Turtle Resort.  The room is
papered in $1.00 bills.

From Crab Cay, we returned to the Green Turtle Yacht Club and Resort where we enjoyed a marvelous meal.  The stories continued through the meal and when all of the other patrons in the restaurant had departed we headed back to the tender for a very dark ride back to the Leeward Yacht Club. 

What a wonderful experience it was to be with this old friend and his lovely wife.

Janine and I are planning on starting to work our way back to the west.  I don’t

Steve, Janine, Bruce, and Bonnie

know if I mentioned it, but we have an appointment with the Hake Yacht company for them to install a new keel on Second Wind during the first week in April so we need to head back to the west end of the Bahamas and look for our weather window for the return Crossing.  We have plenty of time to get back so I hope to stop at some of the interesting Cays that we bypassed on the way here.

We will probably be out of Wi-Fi range for about a week so we will be in the communication dark for that time.  We will head into Old Bahama Bay Marina at West End Grand Bahama for our final staging for the Crossing and will have internet access there.  And, depending on weather and things we find interesting we should arrive there in about a week.