Prologue

Good Lord....whose Idea was this anyway??? 2:00am is a bed time...not a time to be waking up and readying a boat for a Trans-TOTO trip.  Madness is the only word that comes to mind to describe this plan.  I've heard a good rule of thumb when traveling via boat; Subtract one foot off the length of the Length Over All of the vessel, per person per day of the excursion.  With this rule in mind it has effectively rendered S/V Jageritaville negative 3 feet long.  I've also heard an old theory that god smiles on children, drunks, and fools.… I think this theory will be tested many times over the next 5 days.

Tuesday June 15th

2:35am
Winds very light.  Not even bothering with sails, supposed to pick up after daybreak, but on our nose, so lets see if Sweetness (outboard kicker) has 12 more hours left in those 15 ponies!!

5:00 am

Just a sliver of a moon, 2 days from new, just sliced her way skyward.  So beautiful I had to wake the rest of the boat.  Well that and if I can't sleep, why should I let them.  Flat seas, looks like we'll make it in 10 hrs!!!!


9:30 am

>So much for 10 hours.  Winds did indeed kick up.  Along squall lines especially!  Seas 3.5-4.5 feet, crippling our time.


1:45 PM

I wonder if there's any money in prophecy?  I distinctly remember writing 'God smiles on children, fools, and drunks'.  Well, Cari is a minor, Charlie's trashed on Bacardi 8, and I feel like an idiot....Lemme' 'splain.  It is very hot below deck, so we raised the bow hatch, in doing so we had to relocate Goliath (BIG ANCHOR) about an hour ago.  About 15 minutes ago a 'wave' of water came in the bow hatch drenching Shelli, she lifts her head up out of the hatch to see if another wave is coming, only to discover that Goliath had just about had it with our boat and decided he'd be better off on his own.  So we backtrack.  I'm already doing some thinking on how we can spend 5 days in the Exumas with only a single anchor.

3 minutes into this thought process watching the GPS to keep us EXACTLY on the same course, I tell Charlie to throw David(small anchor).  While he's setting anchor, Kari jumps off the stern of the boat snorkel in hand.  Before Charlie has anchor set, Kari is head up from the water saying 'found it'.  God is smiling upon  us, a very welcomed smile indeed.


3:30 pm

Land Ho!!  Not sure what we're lookin' at here, charts and GPS tend to call it Shroud Cay, which is good, that's where we're supposed to be!!  Still 2 hours out tho.

6....ish pm
 On anchors, Beautiful island.

7:30 pm
 Fought 3 seagulls for our spaghetti dinner, and won!  Feeling superior over most things walking...I say most things because of the 60ft motor cruiser upwind from us that are cooking something that smells MUCH better than spaghetti.


 Wednesday June 16th 2004

Noon
Decided to stay on shroud till 3 awaiting a rising tide.  So glad we did, on the eastern side of Shroud Cay is a structure called "Camp Driftwood".  All manor of flotsam and jetsam have been used by cruisers to create this 'camp',  on this flotsam, they will carve/paint the names of their vessels when they were there etc.  Never has a pile of trash been so captivating, we actually found a piece of foam with Luludou carved in it.  Luludou is a boat owned by Matt and Sue Carroll from ARA.  We wrote on 4 clothes pins the name of our boat and all souls on board.  Course the dinghy ride there made the trip that much more enjoyable.  About 25 minutes of beautiful mangroves and two slightly annoying rich kids on jetskis and we were back on our boat, and we would have missed it all, if we left on the sinking tide.  On radioing McDuffs, Lauren answered our hail, he's an hour out from Shroud, looks like we may have a mini-regatta anyway!!

7:00 pm
OK, try to hold this together long enough to get it down, Jager Bombs and Jack D. are causing severe distortion in my reasoning  ability, and what's left of my recollection of the last few hours.  Left Shroud around 3, raised both sails, hit 5.8 kts on a beam reach, and got the port rail wet!  Amazing, but freaked Cari out everytime the boat heeled more than 20 degrees.  Only took an hour to go from Shroud to Norman's.  Once on Norman's we ran into Ryan and Morgan on the Endorfin II.  They told us something about trouble they were having but the Jack Daniels was already kicking in.  A few more drinks later and we decided to go to the old abandoned hotel. Tradition dictates cruisers write vessel name, crew name, words of wisdom, etc, on the walls.  So we added our 2 cents worth.

S/V Jageritaville Booze Cruz 2004!!!
5 People 22 feet of boat
0 privacy
0 sanity
Wasting away again in Jageritaville!

Friday June 18, 2004

10:00 am
Getting ready to pull out from Highbourne.  Found a gorgeous beach the locals call 'Horseshoe Bay', on the north side of the island.  On the beach Shelli found a small piece of bleached black coral.  I think it'll make a nice memorable-type charm.  Found out the guy in the slip beside of us in a 55' God Sized boat used to play for the Florida Marlins.  Made me feel better when he rammed the dock coming in, just like I did.

12:30 am
Just pulled into our anchorage in SW ALLENS!!!!  Very coveted anchorage.  Simply wondrous 'U' shaped island completely blocks wind from east through south all the way to west!  Once on anchorage we took all our quickly rotting fruit to the island and fed it to the lizards, which are much bigger than the lizards on Leaf cay.  And abit more aggressive.

3:30 pm
Charlie and Kari came back empty handed from their snorkeling, but whilst myself, Cari and Shelli were snorkeling we found someone's 'conch stash' ...probably 200 conch all tied together in bunches of 4-5, 2 HUGE piles of conch!  I would've got bent like a wet cigarette if I would've found even one that wasn't of legal size, but they were all legal, so I guess whoever caught them has some sense of conservation, so we left them alone....actually I told Lauren about them since he's going to stay in the exumas for a couple extra days.  He could use them.

Saturday June 19th 2004

6:30 am
About 20 minutes away from pulling hooks and heading back.....hope for good seas!!

3:30 pm
We can see the towers of AUTEC.  Close to home.  Sailed off our anchorage again, never even started the motor until we were 1/2 hour from Allens Cay, looks like we're gonna do it in about 10 1/2 hours.  Not bad!  Hit speeds of 6.7 kts, with Full Sails, 15 ponies kickin' at 3/4 throttle, and surfing down face sides of waves on a following sea.  We were hailed by the Range Master Concerning our bearing when we were 15 miles off High Cay.  Felt a pang of dread knowing we were 'really' not going to be staying on the boat tonight.....so I'm a thinkin, it's time to start drinkin'!

4:45 pm
Mixed emotions as High Cay slowly creeps from our port to our stern.  The children, fools, and drunks, have tested the adage but yet again, and  again proved it true.....Although A/C is going to be nice, there won't be 4 others to laugh with/at while we drift off to sleep tonight.  But maybe that's just the 3 VERY WARM Captain Morgan and Cherry cokes talking.  Anyway lessons learned, Wayward anchors don't float, boats don't have breaks, and fried eggs with Cheeze Whiz ROCKS!!!!!

Thursday June 17th 2004
7:00 am

I found the most annoying mosquito on the planet last night!!  OK, that sounded a little bit egocentrical...The most annoying mosquito on the planet found me at 4 am, and kept me awake the remainder of the morning.  Rained 3 times over night and once in the morning.  I love being on the boat in the rain, if you can't do anything anyway, what better place to do nothing than on an anchorage off of a beautiful island with good friends?  Then it got even better,  Lauren fried up some eggs and brought them over to us, very cool of him, and once they were covered with Cheeze Whiz they even tasted great!!

12:30 pm
Two firsts today, #1, We sailed off our anchorage from Norman's to Highbourne, Never even started the motor until we were close to the marina on Highbourne, then when sails were down, we radioed the marina who asked about our boat size, beam, and draft.  After answering Shelli followed it with, 'just give us a puddle, we can park her anywhere'. Which is where the second 'first' of the day came into play, first time I ever pulled into a slip @ a marina, So I had to hit the dock....so, if you count that as a first as well, I had 3 'firsts'.  We are the smallest boat in the harbor, but we are also the biggest/only sailboat!  And we are in 'lucky' slip 13.....that's what I blamed hitting the dock on!!

7:30 pm

Not alot changed about Highbourne Cay, looks like they are running electricity to the entire island, which has to be exciting to the 13 inhabitants of the island!  Charlie and Kari went snorkeling and got 5 conch, we went to the store and got stuff to make conch salad, and Hamburgers and hot dogs, grilled them up....my god they were so good!  Spaghetti is only good every other day!  Around 6:30 a 48' catamaran sailboat pulled into the marina.  My reaction. "great, we WERE the biggest sailboat in the harbour!"


9:30 pm

If I don't live through this night I need to let others know that Highbourne cay marina has more mosquitos than grains of sand!!  and the island blocks the prevailing winds!!  Never again will I stay at the marina!!