Tuesday, November 1, 2005

Sure is hard to cast off those dock lines but we're trying! We flew out of Albany NY last Thursday - destination Marsh Harbor, Bahamas for our long awaited ten day vacation on our new boat "Island Girl".  We'd been keeping a close eye on hurricane "Wilma" but it was stalled in Mexico and we decided not to change our plans.  Spent Thursday night at a great hotel in South Beach, one of our favorite places for a fun time.  On Friday we arrived at the dock in Marsh Harbor and boarded "Island Girl".  Right after we arrived the torrential rains came.  So we spent the afternoon exploring Marsh Harbor by running from "watering hole" to "watering hole".  Stopped by the local market and picked up a few supplies with the intention of doing some serious shopping on Saturday.

Saturday morning was bright and sunny - a perfect day.  We spent the morning checking out all the systems on our new boat.  We were so excited that it was a while before we  noticed  that the crew at the marina was busy battening down boats and moving them out and the workers at the restaurant on the dock were boarding up all the windows!  We took a walk down to the nearest "watering hole" where they had cable TV to make another check on Wilma.  She was leaving Yucatan and things were not looking good.  Back to the marina we went to talk to the folks who are managing our boat.  It was time to have "Island Girl" battened down and moved up the river to the hurricane hole.  We had two choices; move to higher ground for a couple of days or fly back to Miami.  When you fly into Marsh Harbor and look down you realize how it got it's name - the surrounding area is low and marshy, barely above sea level.  We asked where "higher ground" might be and were told that we could get a room on the third floor of a resort hotel on the beach to the tune of $189/night!  $189/night to potentially experience a hurricane in a foreign country with limited resources  just didn't seem like the wise choice.  So we packed up and flew to Miami that afternoon. 

But wait there were still more choices.  Where do we go from Miami?  Do we spend a couple of days in Miami and hope that all would be back to normal by mid week and we could  fly back to Marsh Harbor to continue our vacation? Do we rent a car and drive over to Cape Coral to check on our other boat, "Mystic Jitney", also in the path of Wilma?  Do we just go home? A mandatory evacuation in Lee County and no place to go but the boat once we got there made the idea of driving to Cape Coral easy to eliminate.  But it was tempting to think that we might get back to Marsh Harbor.  Our better judgment told us to give in and go home.  We couldn't get a flight out on Saturday so we took a room at a hotel near the airport.  Right after we checked in they started boarding up all the doors and windows in the lobby.  We felt assured that we had made the right choice! So on Sunday morning we got a flight from Miami to Albany.

We did get a couple of pictures of  "Island Girl" before we left on Saturday.

We spent the next couple of days glued to the weather channel.  I'm happy to report that Marsh Harbor didn't sustain any serious damage and "Island Girl" is fine.  Cape Coral was also spared a direct hit and "Mystic Jitney" came through it well - perhaps a couple of scratches from the dock. There's no "trying to reason with hurricane season".

 Our current plans are to pack up the Jeep and the RIB and leave for Cape Coral around November 12.  Alan is having gall bladder surgery tomorrow (we knew about this before we left for the Bahamas) so we'll wait until after his post-op appointment.  Our next trip to the Bahamas will be Christmas and Emma, Matt, William and Sydney will be joining us there for the holidays.