Monday, April 25, 2016

April 12, 2016 Swimming with Dophin in Georgetown, Bahamas


This morning we had an experience of a lifetime.  There was a dolphin hanging around our boat, so Joe got in with snorkel gear and swam with it.  He would follow it, then it would swim circles around him.  When he was tired and started swimming back to the boat, it followed him.  So Erin decided to swim with it and had the same fun.  They had an underwater camera, but weren’t great at snorkeling.  So I decided to get in.  Besides, when will you ever have another chance like this?  I was able to get a great video of the dolphin.  It would go to the bottom and pick a plant that looked like a flower and bring it to the surface.  It was like he really wanted to play with us.  Check out the video!




 



A catamaran from Canada was sailing by, so Joe pointed out the dolphin to them.  Their teen aged daughter was in the water in no time.  They ended up anchoring and taking pictures for a long time, too.  You could hear her giggle through her snorkel.

This afternoon, Dave and Joe worked on the shaft of our boat.  They used the Airline hookah system to be able to stay underwater to work on it.  Dave placed the new zinc over the top of the area that was corroding.  It would serve 2 purposes.  Hopefully the zinc will corrode and not the shaft.  But also it would reinforce the area should it continue to corrode. 

Dave had noticed that the set screws that hold the cutless bearing in place were loose.  He had tightened them, but one continued to rotate and not tighten as it should, stripped but still in place.   Today he placed a hose clamp over the set screws on the shaft log to hold the set screws in place.  So with these repairs to reinforce the shaft and set screws, we felt comfortable continuing to explore the islands.  Once we return to the US, we will have the boat hauled out and the actual repairs done. 

But, we did inform our guests that should there be a failure in this system, our boat could take on water and sink.  So we went through some basic information about where to find the auxiliary bilge pump, our Whale Pump, that is stored in the starboard lazerette.   We have 2 12 volt Jabsco bilge pumps.  We have a manual bilge pump built into the cockpit.  But we would have Joe get out the Whale pump and use it to remove water in addition to our built in bilge pumps if needed.  Dave would go below to try to stop water from coming into the boat. I would deploy our dinghy in case we had to abandon ship.  And maybe Erin would be able to steer us to shallow water with coaching from me.  Now these are true adventurous friends.  They were all for taking off as long as we were comfortable.  We will try to sail as much as possible and use the engine as little as possible.  Joe and Dave have been on a lot of adventures together over the years with the potential of dying, so they are practiced and comfortable with taking on new adventures.  Erin and I have learned to trust them over the year, too.  We’ve known Joe over 25 years and Erin close to 20 years.  So here we go. 
///boat part pictures,  dolphin

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