We wanted to head somewhere but wanted to top off with fuel and water before venturing to remote places. We had learned earlier in the week that Jamal had a town job for awhile and was not available for this service. The Exuma yacht club offered fuel but was likely too shallow or too likely to be too shallow for our comfort. You would have to enter and leave on a high tide. Chris and Susan did it with 5 .5 foot draft but one time they had to wait six hours for the tide which wasn’t a bad thing. They report the sushi there is really good.
So that left our jugs of fuel, which could be filtered, poured in, refilled and dinghied over (two trips to fill and replace emergency supply) or the Emerald Bay Marina which was sort of on our way north. We opted for that.
The Emerald Bay Marina is up north near the airport on Great Exuma. It has an entrance channel which is dredged and a small inner harbor. The approach is from the east toward a beach with an abrupt left turn into a narrow channel just before the beach. We would only attempt that on a calm day and we had that. We hailed them on the radio, well remembering how to do that. We asked permission to get fuel and water and they said they could only help us with fuel.
We made a stellar landing at the fuel dock even though we had the wind behind us. Shane helped to catch our lines. We needed about 13 gallons of fuel. We asked again about water and he said we could at least fill our containers. They showed us a water spigot on another dock. They said we could fill as many times as we wanted. We would then call the clerk to take a picture of the meter. The water was 50 cents a gallon. About an hour later, we had shuttled our 3 cans of water 5 times up and down the dock. We painstakingly filled our starboard tank which was 1/2 empty. Our port tank was already full.
We then planned our exit. We would pull forward where the harbor was a little wider and David would do a standing turn to the left to face us forward again. We turned on the engine, click, nothing happened. Seven times we turned the key and nothing happened. Our old starter problem was back. Just as we were considering Emerald Bay as a destination, the motor started. We executed our departure plan and headed out. As much as we wanted to turn for points north, we knew the best thing would be to return to Georgetown and to replace our starter. We turned south. The most resources are there. Other boaters have a lot of tools and knowledge if we should need it.
We reattached to our mooring ball #37, launched Fat Tuesday and headed to the beach for a walk. We crossed on the trail to the ocean side. I floated in a tide pool. We walked back to a beautiful sunset. The tide was coming in and Fat Tuesday was on her own little island.
Back to the boat for conch horn (improving), dinner and some you tube videos. We tried to start the engine again and were reassured that it took several tries to start it. We may be able to diagnose it now. Boat work tomorrow.