Prepping for Bahamas

We are so excited to finally be going to the Bahamas, but the prep is a lot of work! In fact, it deserves its own blog entry. We are including this trip as part of our training, Kim and Amy are getting certified in ASA 105 (Coastal Navigation) and ASA 106 (Advanced Coastal Cruising). As I didn’t know the material I actually had to do a lot of reading and studying for the exams.

And of course before going we had to provision. The advice we heard was –yes there are places to buy groceries in the Bahamas (people do live there after all and they have to eat), so get items that are super expensive in Bahamas, or favorites you won’t be able to find there. Well, we figured Bahamas would not have humanely raised nitrite free turkey hotdogs, so that part made sense. But pricing?? I don’t really know except that beer is super expensive in Bahamas but we hardly ever drink so I don’t need to worry about that one. Basically Aislin and I went to Publix and bought as much food as we thought we could store.

We had a list you wouldn’t believe of last minute preparations. So much to do we ended up renting a car in Miami for 2 days to be able to run errands. We found out just before leaving that our Honda Generator has been recalled —all 20,000 of them that have been sold in the last year, so of course no one has the part to fix it— all on backorder now. We need a generator to charge the batteries when we’ve had too many cloudy days for the solar panels to keep them charged and to run the water maker. So I ran to Harbor Freight and bought a second generator. After this trip we will just sell it — we certainly don’t need to keep two! We also had runs to West Marine for a spare dinghy prop, a quick run to Publix (again!!) this time for fresh dairy, fruits, and veggies. Skipper had to go to a vet in Coconut Grove to get his health certificate (supposed to be done 48 hours prior to arrival in Bahamas). We had to install the new RO Membrane for the water maker, get cash from BOA, pick up mail, install a new chip in our chartplotter, go to T- Mobile and change our cell phone plan, arrange a diver to clean the bottom of the boat, repair the hose in the starboard head, and pick up Kim’s prescriptions and extra Bonine for seasickness. And of course the usual– empty composting head, do laundry, fill with water, fill with diesel and gas, clean the boat, wash all the sheets and make the beds. All in 4 days!!

And of course in those 4 days there were mishaps along the way. Kim got a stomach bug and spent 3 of those days feeling miserable in bed or throwing up. I took me an entire day to install the RO membrane. Although there was a You Tube video to show me how to do it, it was a lot harder than it looked on that video, and I’m not usually the fixer in the family. Kim powered through and was able to help me with some of that installation (hard to do when every time she bent over she felt like she was going to vomit or pass out). After installing the membrane I ran the water maker to test it and we were so excited ! We tested the water and it was perfect! Tested with hardly any solid ppm, tasted just a fresh as the water from our water tanks. Yay!! We let it the water maker run for a few hours (it makes 20 gallons/ hour), until we noticed that when trying to wash dishes or take a shower we had just trickles of water coming out. Further investigation — we had completely emptied our water tanks— pumped every bit of our fresh water into Biscayne Bay. Apparently there is a valve to backwash the system, pushing a little bit of fresh water from our tanks through the membrane if the system hasn’t been used in a few days. Well, the good news is I know where that valve is now. Fortunately we were able to refill the tanks at the docks at Dinner Key before taking off.