In our last episode we tried to share
with you what a typical day looks like
for us now that we are living on a boat
full time.  It is a mix of exploration,
playing tourist, sailing, new faces, new
places, boat maintenance, boat problems,
personal maintenance and experimenting
in the kitchen.
This week we realize that the sun was
setting on our time in the Bahamas as we
get ready to explore the rest of the
Caribbean.  But first we needed to fix the
biggest problem that we've had on the
boat so far before making our way to
pick up our Patreon crew member who would help us with a couple of the longer
passages coming up.
This week has been a disaster for our
water situation.  We have our watermaker
and it has been making salt water ever
since probably before Nassau it wasn't
great and so while we were in Nassau we had time to order a new watermaker membrane
and you know get it through customs and
do all of this stuff that takes so long
when you're a cruiser in a foreign
country and we get it put in the watermaker
and it's still making saltwater so
John took it apart 50 times I swear and
still nothing. Couldn't diagnose it,
couldn't you know replaced every seal,
changed the seals, rotated the seals, just
absolutely everything he could think of
and we even tried our membrane in
another watermaker that's the same as
ours.
Katadyn has sent us a replacement
membrane just because we were able to
narrow it down to being a faulty
membrane that was sent to us.  Which is so frustrating because it took weeks to get
it before.  So now we're stuck in Black
Point in the Exumas because they have
free reverse osmosis water on the land
so we're filling up our little one
gallon jugs everyday and bringing them
back to the boat for drinking water and
we're using our salty watermaker water
for cooking and showers and all of
that but some of our friends were coming
from Nassau and they've totally saved our
butts they bought us two six gallon
water jugs from just the local, I think
it's called Lightbourne Marine or
something like that, in Nassau and they
ridiculously expensive because
everything in the Bahamas is but we
needed to drink and we can't even leave here with
just two gallons of water which is what
we currently have storage for and so
yeah they've just gotten here they've
just pulled up this morning and I can
see them
strapped to the side of the deck so
we're not only excited to see our
friends but these guys ran into town for
us grabbed him last minute and yeah
they're saviours!
We've been waiting near Staniel Cay for
nearly two weeks now waiting for our
watermaker parts to come, they finally
came today and we've got a new pressure
relief valve, new spool kit valve it's
just a shuttle and a replacement
membrane because the last one was faulty!
So we also actually got a fun little toy, a
little TDS meter because I've been doing
it by taste but now we can actually test
it make sure that we get it accurate and
I'm gonna see what we're making at the
moment and then we will see what we get
to when we replace just a pressure
relief valve and spool kit and then if we
still don't get drinkable water we will put
in a new membrane, see how we go! 
 
The water currently sitting in our water
tanks tested over 4,000 parts per
million a level that is much higher than
the recommended amount of around or
under 500 parts per million for drinking
water.
The next test was for the water coming
directly from our watermaker and it
came out at 3,600 parts per million.
 Still far too high and so out came the
watermaker again this time to replace
this spool valve and the pressure relief
valve to see if that helped before
opening the packaging and committing to
using our new membrane.  But with a TDS
reading of over 3,900 after replacing
the valves, we knew that the membrane
must be the problem.
Now we should be making fresh water.
New membrane in fingers crossed...
Five hundred five hundred and twenty six!
Watermakers in and Cally's back after doing a video and we're about to head out from
Staniel down to Great Inagua.  We have  got to be in the D.R. in six days to
pick up Max
Cally: Zak
John: Zak, so we leave here today
and we should be there in Great Inagua in
three days and then it's another two
days
we'll stay overnight and get some rest
there and then it's two days to Luperon
where we're gonna pick up Zak.
Hopefully we can be there in time!
Fingers crossed! It's gonna be a good
sail so we're just gonna head out the
Staniel Cay cut at the moment it's
high tide dropping down so we'll have
some mean current on the way out but
it'll pop us out nicely unfortunately
it's wind against tide so it's gonna be
a little bit steep and sharp and a bit
grotty on the way out but once we're
outside hopefully it's smooth sailing all the way
down and we have to try the new rod and
the new reel and hopefully mahi-mahi for dinner.
Cally: that's what I
want
Still annoyed lost our Mahi.  Its a little
bit rough and we're gonna be punching into it for three days but we've gotta get
down to get Zak so we don't really have
a choice..
It's yeah that's okay, winds about 15
knots a little bit more and this seas are
only little so it could be a lot
worse! I just wish that we had our nice
easterlies and Cally's cooking so
that's another good thing!
It's a feast!  I'm making
that Mexican dish with the beans and corn and sweet potato one.  Because we have lots of cans - and I used our last sweet potato.
John: it's so nice in there I am cold!
Cally: you are cold?  I'm so hot, this is like the dungeon.
John: I want to go to bed.
Cally: I know you get to go to bed after dinner!
We were heading to Great Inagua
from Staniel and we ran out of
steam and the weather was a little bit
crappy. It was coming from the southeast
and we were trying to go southeast so we
had to skip it.  We pulled into Georgetown and rerouted our friend who's coming to
visit, Zak, and now we're just
hanging out in Georgetown until he gets
here.  So we're gonna go up monument hill and check it out and watch the sunset.
Cally: looks like Everest.
Wow what are they cool
rock things in the sand?  Looks like pictures.
Oh, I have a feeling. Navman says this is the way.
 
John: where?
Cally: It doesn't look like a path but it's up
this way
and then we're gonna take a right up the
ridge. 
John: that's a scramble!
Cally: I have no professional climbing experience but my instincts say...
John: oh my god the noseeums are out already!
Cally: are they? Get me off this beach!
We are getting ready to go down to
flip-flop beach for social time with
other cruisers. I guess Music &
Lyrics, some people that we met in the
Berry Islands, who were on a catamaran they announced on the cruisers net this morning
that they're gonna be down there for drinks and so we're gonna bring beersbee and the
drone and I'm gonna bring my skimball
in case people are swimming and we're gonna
bring a cooler of alcohol and just enjoy
the evening.  We put on lots of bug spray
because we learned our lesson last
night when we tried to catch the sunrise
and got eaten alive so I'm just trying to get the beersbee out of the closet - which, oh there it is!
Cally: perfect! The trouble is that we need beer bottles, I hope someone is drinking beer out of bottles.  We will have to find out!
I knew we should have traveled with the plastic bottles that came with it!
Okay we've got our beersbee poles,
frisbee and drone in its case and John's
working on the bartending - excuse me - just gonna grab the skimball somewhere over there! Skimball!
Are you pumped? Tell us you're pumped!
John: so pumped...
Cally: he's so pumped!  Anyways, so off to the beach.
John: off to the beach!
The party slowly wound down as the sun
was setting but we were some of the last
to leave, arriving home in the dark.  And
we couldn't resist sending the drone up
one last time to show you the twinkling
lights of the Georgetown anchorage at
night.
Mornings in Georgetown were my favourite beginning every day with a cup of tea
and tuning in to channel 72 for
cruisers net on the radio!  From the
excellent hosts to topics like boaters in
need, weather or announcements of boats
arriving and departing there was always
something to listen to with that many boats
in the nearby anchorages.
Radio: ... on the Great Catsby, thank you!
 
John: the Great Catsby, ha!
Radio:  This is Karen and Mark on Sea Vous Plait...
 
Cally:  Sea Vous Plait that's cute!
 
Radio:  Welcome back to Sea Vous Plait that is Karen and Mark from North Carolina. Other new arrivals today?
Radio:  En passont.  We arrived last night we are from Quebec, we have three kids on board.
 
Cally: perfect for Sophie's
birthday, they should go!
Though we were loving the people that we met, the beautiful calm anchorages in Georgetown and the
adorable route to get to the town dinghy
dock it was time to get the boat ready
for our guest and without much time to
get acquainted or to spare for jet lag
our crew of three departed the Bahamas.
 Stay tuned for next week when our
journey to the Dominican Republic though
starting out as an idyllic stereotypical
Bahamian sail quickly turns into our
worst sail so far.
 
Cally: welcome to the boat underweay, its terrible.  So rough...
