Agandau

01/29/2021

Lobster hunting in Exuma

01/01/2021

Happy New Year 🎊. Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2021 🎉

12/17/2020

We didn’t leave when we thought. I found a serious crack in a half inch thick piece of stainless steel that connects the forestay to the bobstay. (See pictures) A failure of which would have been catastrophic resulting in loss of the mast among other things. Happy that I found it but had to have new piece made and welded in place. Anyway the plan is to sail direct to Great Exuma Bahamas tomorrow morning (Thursday). Supposed to be 43 degrees when we leave and I don’t look forward to it but after we cross the Gulf Stream ( 24 hrs to get to it and another 10 hrs to get to the other side) it will be much warmer. If all goes well we should arrive in Exuma in about 6 days. We are about 300 miles offshore at the farthest point off the coast of Georgia.

12/08/2020

12/08/2020

Yep, it’s that time of year when birds and sailboats head south. While November 15th was the target date for leaving, it obviously has long since passed. However Wednesday we may set sails and head back to the Bahamas. Big change this year...Agandau has a new “full time crew member”, Anita. She has resigned her position to take up the sailing life. She is a physical therapist. Before becoming a pt she sailed the Bahamas and the Caribbean for a couple of years, so while its been a few years she’s eager to do it again. She’s been spiffing up the boat and even built a full cockpit enclosure... which sure as hell will help as we take off in mid December. Oh, and she did it on a home sewing machine!

11/28/2018

Gale force winds caused a delay so did not go yesterday. Colder today, but plan to go today. NOT looking forward to it...I don’t like the cold. I’m skinny and old. Got a lot on punch list accomplished because of the delay however, so all is good.

11/27/2018

Agandau sets sail this am for Great Exuma. First 2 days are going to be cold and windy...hopefully warmer on the other side of Gulf Stream.

04/04/2018

OW! Double OW! Damn that hurts... Cruisers call little dings, bruises and small cuts...boat kisses, or sometimes boat bites. Today wasn’t a bite, the damn boat tried to eat me! One of the first painful lessons (not that I hadn’t been warned) I learned was to tie the anchor locker hatch to the rail when anchoring. The reason was or is that if the boat swings or the wind shifts the hatch can blow closed. Not a good outcome if you are in the anchor locker or your foot is. Yep, I was a little slow to take up the good advice until it happened. Fortunately I had Gators on and other than a bruised toe I was no worse for the wear. But I learned and devised what I thought was a simple and effective means of securing the hatch when it was opened. You can see my solution was a bungee cord with a hook that fit nicely over the rail when it was open. What could possibly go wrong?
Well nothing...until this morning. I was anchoring at the entrance of Spanish Wells in Eleuthera. Beautiful day with light breeze. I moved quickly to the bow to drop the anchor. I yanked open the hatch and the bungee cord hook caught on something inside the locker. I must have stepped forward as I raised the hatch with my toe just inside the locker. The bungee reached the end of its range and yanked the hatch back out of my hand and closed. Not with just the weight of the anchor hatch but with the force of the bungee cord retracting AND the weight of the hatch. Yeah, this is where the ouch comes in. The boat is stopped but now drifting toward the rocks, so the anchor must still be dropped and set or my problems could get a whole lot worse. Anchor now set the cussing crying and blood stopping now begins. Good thing I’m not on blood thinners and my blood has great clotting qualities. Yep, living the dream!

01/02/2018

Oh yeah, I'm happy. Great day one of 2018.

01/01/2018

And the conchs lead to my new toy...

01/01/2018

Two of the freebies here, plenty of Conch and coconuts...