Maule Lake

Day 172, January 28th, 2010

We had a hard time getting Chris Parker this morning. Very poor reception on the radio so that we missed the first half of his forecast and were only able to get him clearly when he started talking to his sponsoring boats.

John was called over to our immediate neighbours first thing, "Aquavit". They told John they were dropping down to No Name Harbour today and would be crossing to the Bimini Islands tomorrow morning , starting at 5:00 a.m. They wanted to know if we would like to join them.
The forecast on NOAA was winds out of the NE, up to 10 knots, with seas of 2ft or less. John was still leery. "Nothing with an N in it" is a common rule of thumb. I radioed Pea Soup and asked for their input. They agreed that the window would be very short and although they had crossed once with a north wind, they advised it might be better to wait. That made us feel more settled. We will stay in Miami until we feel confident to go. Aquavit is considerably larger than Periwinkle too, and it would have a much bigger engine. They would be able to push harder if conditions were uncomfortable but that would not be so easy for us!!

So John and I continued with our original plan for the day. We had looked and looked for somewhere around here to fill our empty propane tank, without success. There are places where you can exchange tanks but nowhere where you can get a small 10 lb. tank filled. We remembered though that there had been a place right by the anchorage in Maule Lake, so we decided to go back there and get both tanks filled. We left at 9:00 a.m. only doing about 4.6 - 5.0 knots against a north wind and the tide. It took us 3 hours to do a little more than 12 miles!
However, we reached Maule Lake around 12:00, gobbled down a peanut butter and honey sandwich and set off to walk up to the propane place. It wasn't very far but those tanks get heavy, especially on the way back! Good thing I'd furnished us both with a pair of gloves!
We didn't stick around at Maule Lake. As soon as we'd got back to the boat we brought the anchor up and set off back to the Venetian Causeway again. This time we anchored on the north side again, with Suncast and Twice 's Nice. Very cosy! Barbecued a steak for supper, with baked potatos and cole slaw. Yummy.

Once we'd cleared up, John got busy with the wifi booster and tried to hook us up with the internet. Its a good thing he's a persistent kind of fella. It took him 2 hours! The silly thing would get so far and then spit him out. We couldn't get connected at all when we were anchored on the south side. However, he was finally successful!! And now I'm up to date again!