2023 Bahamas: Nov 18th Prologue

 The thing with planning a trip a year ahead is that by the time you have to execute it you forgot how you ended up booking a place like Marsh Harbor. I think we had 2 boats available, one in Nassau, and one in Marsh Harbor, and Marsh Harbor wasn't just cheaper, but it was a place Arturo hadn't been to before. Prior to the flight, United changed our flights a few times, to the point where while we were supposed to all arrive together at 1:15pm when we booked the flights, we ended up being separated from the rest of the group and being supposed to arrive at 4:15pm. Even that was in question as our plane was delayed in Fort Lauderdale, and the pilot told everyone to hurry up and sit down as he wanted to arrive at Marsh Harbor before 6:00pm when the airport closed!

Nevertheless, we landed at 6:15pm and the airport stayed open for us. We zipped through customs and immigration far more easily than in most other countries I've been to, and it wasn't more than 15 minutes to get our luggage, get into a taxi, and head over to Conch Inn Marina, where we were told that the boat we had booked, Belight, had had generator problems, and we had been given a new boat instead, Katja. The new boat had a watermaker, which was a nice upgrade --- we were planning to have 9 people on the boat, and without a watermaker we'd be putting in at port every couple of days to refill the tank. The generator let us trade diesel for water, which wasn't a bad thing. What was strange was that the Katja flushed freshwater in the toilets --- the reasoning being that salt water would gum up the pipes eventually. Clearly once you have a water maker on the boat you're expected to use it. As it was, we would end the trip using up 42 gallons of diesel, running the generator for 3 hours a night to make enough water for all of us to shower.

Having arrived late, the rest of the crew had thankfully already provisioned the boat, walking to the supermarket 20 minutes away and then hiring a taxi to cart everything back. One thing that we had neglected to do was bring coffee beans and a grinder! I'd brought the aeropress though, so Arturo had bought pre-ground coffee. There was a list of additional items to buy for the next morning, but it wasn't very big, and the folks who weren't involved in sailing the boat proper could do it.

Along with my family and Arturo, Niniane was joining us for the third time, and both Mark and Arturo had their sisters along! We had dinner at Colors, which had good but expensive food served in a casual environment. I noted that because the wind was so strong there were no mosquitoes!

What I would also discover the next morning was that the boat also had a broken gas alarm that kept going off if you ran the stove. Fortunately, Navigare's technicians were competent and fixed it before we left. We were told that the previous charter had removed the fuse to eliminate the annoying noise!