Long Island , Bahamas

We stayed at Thompson Bay, Long Island much longer this year than last.  There was a magnet holding us there in the friendship and love we received from a couple we met who are from Ohio but are winter residents of Long Island.

John and Penny who have the beautiful home, Fairhaven, overlooking Thompson Bay were introduced to us thru our friends Bill and Margaret on the sailboat Margarita.  What a great time we had at long Island.  It was a much different experience this year compared to last year.

We also met Penny's sister Cathie and her husband Gary who live in Missouri and were visiting for two months.  We all had a great time getting together and going to several different beaches, the Long Island museum, out dining and dancing at the Beach Bungalow Bar in Deals and the Stella Marris resort at Stella Marris.  John was great at carting our butts all over the island in there van.  I just cannot say enough about how good they were to us and we will miss them but will surely meet up again either back on Long Island or somewhere down the road.

  Photos taken at Forests restaurant - Greatest burgers in the Bahamas.

                                          Top:  Margaret, Penny
                                          Bottom:  Cathie, Sandy

                                           Left-Right:  John, Gary
 
Taken at the Long Island Museum - us with the museum Curator.

On the way over to the Bahamas our autopilot was having problems.  At Long Island I met Mark from "Wind in the Morning"  who was a radar technician in the navy and had worked on electronics.  He is known as Mr. Fixit.  He was nice enough to come out to our boat and check out the autopilot and discovered a connector that he didn't think was connecting properly.  He couldn't find that type of connector to replace it on the island so I took small strips of copper foil from my SSB ground and slid them into the female end of the connector and that made the connection tight.  The autopilot has worked since then so many thanks to Mark.

We rented a car for a day and went to Stella Marris to recheck in to the Bahamas since our 90 days was up on our cruising permit.  We also went south to Dean's Blue Hole, the deepest blue hole in the world where free divers train and compete.  A young lady was on the island to train and was going for the woman's world record dive of 200 feet.  We thought she would be at the Hole that day but we missed seeing her train.  We did get a chance to meet and talk to her at one of the beach parties however.

So much for Long Island, back to the Exuma's soon.