My trip to Colorado was great.  It was in question if I would get back to North Carolina as scheduled.  My travels to NC took me through Washington, DC.  Not usually a problem except they had around 24 inches of snow the day before I was expected to fly.  Fortunately, it all turned out pretty good.  I was just a little late but made both flights.  I even received a $150 towards another flight in the future because the flight out of Denver was a bit late.  Unsure why but I will took it.

I spent a few days in NC and traveled again on Dec. 23.  New Bern, NC to Charlotte, NC and from there to Nassau.  No problem.  When I got to Nassau I changed airlines to Flamingo Air to get to Staniel Cay.  The weather in Nassau was a little cloudy.  Flamingo Air was a little late leaving Nassau, not unusual it is a small airline with small eight passenger planes.  I was lucky enough to sit in the co-pilot seat.  I have always wanted to sit in that seat and it was worth the wait.   As we were flying towards Staniel Cay, we had to dodge a few intimidating clouds but again that is nothing too unusual in smaller planes.  As we got closer to Staniel it was obvious the weather was a bit different near Staniel than it was in Nassau.  It started raining and was a bit windy.  Once we did the sharp turn in the air headed for the runway, it was pouring and we were bouncing around a little but we landed without a problem.  It was very interesting (in a good way) to watch all this in the co-pilot seat.  Steve was at the terminal (a small complex with a roof and no walls) soaking wet waiting to greet me.  He was shocked that Flaming Air traveled in such bad weather.  Who knew, I surely did not.  I actually enjoyed the flight.  According to a few people it had been the worst day in the area for some time.  Oh well, I made it safe and sound. 

On Christmas Day Steve and I volunteered to help with the Christmas program at Staniel Cay Yacht Club for the children in the area.  We organized the gifts for Santa to give out to each child.  The kids made baseball caps that had a lot of colored glue, sparkles, feathers and other things they could glue on to the hat.  It was a bit messy but the kids had a great time.  The children also painted little statues, and worked on sticker books.  Once Santa arrived it became complete chaos.  The kids had to be lined up in order by age and also in order so that they would receive the correct gift.  It was funny to watch the boys just poking and pushing each other, too much excitement.  Steve and I helped for 2.5 hours, we had to get back to our boat because we were having Christmas dinner on our boat with Mike and Kathy (Sapphire), Nancy and Jim (Solitaire) and Christy and Bill (Veranda).

Christmas dinner consisted of: ham, garlic mashed potatoes, cooked carrots, corn casserole, coleslaw, rolls,  Mac-n-cheese, apple dumplings and cheese cake.  It was all great.  We did a dirty Santa gift exchange.   It was perfect.

Boxing day we did not have any decoration to take down so instead Steve and I went out snorkeling and hunting.  Before I could get all my gear on to get in the water Steve is heading back to the dingy with the biggest lobster I have ever seen.  It was as big as my thigh (no comments) it was huge.  We snorkeled in that area for a bit but did not see anything else so we jumped back in the dingy and went to another area that is shallow but has a lot of coral heads.  Steve jumped in the water and only stayed in for a short time because the current was pretty strong I stayed in the dingy and just followed him around.  It was interesting when he came up on a ginormous nurse shark lying on the bottom with a remora latched to him and a nice size conch right next to him.  No need to disturb him so Steve got back in the boat and he wanted me to see this huge shark so I checked it out through the look bucket.  It was the biggest nurse shark I have ever seen.  But once I saw the conch next to the shark it gave me an idea to look around that area to see if maybe there might happen to be more conch in the area and Bingo!  There were tons of conch.  I did not get in the water at the time because the current was just too strong for me little ole me (ha!).  We did come back to the same spot later and I got in the water and Steve followed me around but it was tough for me.  Not only was the current strong but my diving to the bottom abilities are quite comical.   I wear a wet suit without weights and it just does not allow me to dive deep.  Plus when I dive down it seems my flippers are flopping out of the water more than under the water and that makes it a tad bit difficult to get to the bottom.  It always humors Steve.  I could hear him in the dingy laughing at me.  Cruel.

Spent most of Dec 28^th getting fuel on the boat.  We had to jerry jug 35 gallons of diesel from Staniel to Big Majors to fill up the fuel tank.  It took three trips since we only have three five gallon tanks. 

We had an impromptu to beach party last evening.  It is fun to just get a bunch of people together and go to the beach for a get together.  The topic of conversation is usually what has recently broken on your boat, some sort of fishing story, and possibly groveling with other boaters to see if they have the part you need to fix the whatcha-ma-call-it.

Tonight is the annual Pirate Party at Staniel Cay Yacht Club, last year Karen (Draggin Lady) and I made the poster/post card they are using this year to promote the party with a hit and miss costume so we will see what happens this year with the full fledged costume.

Captain’s Note:

We will start including our current latitude and longitude when we do an update.  If any of you are interested there are several free websites that will show you that location.  You might want to check out Google Earth ( www.googleearth.com ).  It is a free program that will show a specific lat/lon via a satellite picture of that location…very cool!  You can really zoom in also. 

Our current position is: Lat N24 11.129 and Lon W076 27.551

As Kim stated, tonight is the Pirate Party, but the New Year’s celebration includes several regattas, races, parties, and pig roasts (I’m not sure if they use some of the swimming pigs or not).  We’ll have an update after all of the festivities.

Later…

Steve and Kim